How to format your references using the The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety. 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

[1]

A. Spiegel, Cell signaling. beta-arrestin--not just for G protein-coupled receptors, Science. 301 (2003) 1338–1339.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

W. de Laat, D. Duboule, Topology of mammalian developmental enhancers and their regulatory landscapes, Nature. 502 (2013) 499–506.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

S.A. Desai, S.M. Bezrukov, J. Zimmerberg, A voltage-dependent channel involved in nutrient uptake by red blood cells infected with the malaria parasite, Nature. 406 (2000) 1001–1005.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

G.N. Patrick, L. Zukerberg, M. Nikolic, S. de La Monte, P. Dikkes, L.-H. Tsai, reply: Neurobiologyp25 protein in neurodegeneration, Nature. 411 (2001) 764–765.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

T.G. Faticoni, The Mathematics of Infinity, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2006.

An edited book

[1]

S. Carl, Nonsmooth Variational Problems and Their Inequalities: Comparison Principles and Applications, Springer US, Boston, MA, 2007.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

T. Abel, Cultural Capital in Health Promotion, in: I. Kickbusch, L. Potvin, J.M. Pelikan, L. Balbo, T. Abel (Eds.), Health and Modernity: The Role of Theory in Health Promotion, Springer, New York, NY, 2007: pp. 43–73.

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 Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety.

Blog post

[1]

A. Carpineti, NASA’s Mission To Metal Asteroid Psyche Will Now Arrive Four Years Earlier, IFLScience. (2017).

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

[1]

Government Accountability Office, Motor Carriers: Better Information Needed to Assess Effectiveness and Efficiency of Safety Interventions, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2016.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

D. Anderson, Chamber Music in Early Piano Study: A Guide to Repertoire, Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati, 2004.

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

[1]

J. Gorman, Sciencetake; Hungry Bumble Bees Buzz for Their Suppers, New York Times. (2016) D2.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

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 Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety
ISSN (print)	1553-7250
Scope

Research and Writing Guides