How to format your references using the The Ceylon Medical Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Ceylon Medical Journal. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Find the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

Servick K. Top heart lab comes under fire. Science. 2014 Jul 18;345(6194):254.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ofek G, Diskin R. HIV. Expanding the breadth of an HIV-1 vaccine. Science. 2014 Dec 12;346(6215):1290–1.

A journal article with 3 authors

Freitag J, Ast J, Bölker M. Cryptic peroxisomal targeting via alternative splicing and stop codon read-through in fungi. Nature. 2012 May 23;485(7399):522–5.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Zheng Q, Jiao N, Zhang R, Chen F, Suttle CA. Prevalence of psbA-containing cyanobacterial podoviruses in the ocean. Sci Rep. 2013 Nov 13;3:3207.

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

Krabbes G, Fuchs G, Canders WR, May H, Palka R. High Temperature Superconductor Bulk Materials. Weinheim, FRG: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA; 2006.

An edited book

Wang L, Shafiq B, editors. Data and Applications Security and Privacy XXVII: 27th Annual IFIP WG 11.3 Conference, DBSec 2013, Newark, NJ, USA, July 15-17, 2013. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2013. XIV, 305 p. 71 illus. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; vol. 7964).

A chapter in an edited book

Kagen LJ. Inclusion Body Myositis. In: Kagen LJ, editor. The Inflammatory Myopathies. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press; 2009. p. 87–94.

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for The Ceylon Medical Journal.

Blog post

Andrew E. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Nearby Exoplanet’s Hellish Atmosphere Measured. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/space/nearby-exoplanets-hellish-atmosphere-measured/

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

Government Accountability Office. James Webb Space Telescope: Project on Track but May Benefit from Improved Contractor Data to Better Understand Costs. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2015 Dec. Report No.: GAO-16-112.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Mazon WE. The effect of the Breath Builder^TM on various lung functions and musical performance abilities of clarinet players [Doctoral dissertation]. [Tucson, AZ]: University of Arizona; 2009.

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

Koblin J. Apple’s First Big TV Move: A Spielberg Series Reboot. New York Times. 2017 Oct 10;B3.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (1).
This sentence cites two references (1,2).
This sentence cites four references (1–4).

About the journal

Full journal title	The Ceylon Medical Journal
Abbreviation	Ceylon Med. J.
ISSN (print)	0009-0875
Scope	General Medicine