How to format your references using the The Journal of Clinical Investigation citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Journal of Clinical Investigation. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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. Macfadden BJ. Evolution. Fossil horses--evidence for evolution. Science 2005;307(5716):1728–1730.
A journal article with 2 authors
1. Moir S, Fauci AS. Immunology. Salmonella susceptibility. Science 2010;328(5977):439–440.
A journal article with 3 authors
1. Xing L, Li X, Snider WD. Neurodevelopment. “RASopathic” astrocytes constrain neural plasticity. Science 2015;348(6235):636–637.
A journal article with 6 or more authors
1. Schwarz D, Matta BM, Shakir-Botteri NL, McPheron BA. Host shift to an invasive plant triggers rapid animal hybrid speciation. Nature 2005;436(7050):546–549.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
1. Mack I. Energy Trading and Risk Management. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2014:
An edited book
1. Shi YQ (ed). Transactions on Data Hiding and Multimedia Security VII. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2012:
A chapter in an edited book
1. Amro SA, Chiclana F, Elizondo DA. Application of Fuzzy Logic in Computer Security and Forensics. In: Elizondo DA, Solanas A, Martinez-Balleste A eds. Computational Intelligence for Privacy and Security. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2012:35–49

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 Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Blog post
1. Fang J. Seals With Sensors on Their Heads Record Ocean Data in Harsh, Icy Waters [Internet]. IFLScience 2015;https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/seals-sensors-their-heads-record-ocean-data-harsh-icy-waters/. cited October 30, 2018

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. Improper Use of Federal Student Aid Funds for Lobbying Activities. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1982:

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
1. Messian NM. The Spiral of Time: A Path to the Soul—Jewish Mystical and Depth Psychological Perspectives2012;

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. Bidgood J, Schwartz J. Hurricane Nate Hits Gulf Coast Region Still Recovering From Katrina. New York Times 2017;A18.

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 titleThe Journal of Clinical Investigation
AbbreviationJ. Clin. Invest.
ISSN (print)0021-9738
ISSN (online)1558-8238
ScopeGeneral Medicine

Other styles