How to format your references using the The New England Journal of Medicine citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). 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	Download the output style file
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

Miller KD. Neuroscience. π = visual cortex. Science 2010;330(6007):1059–60.

A journal article with 2 authors

Jensen LJ, Bork P. Biochemistry. Not comparable, but complementary. Science 2008;322(5898):56–7.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ginsberg NS, Garner SR, Hau LV. Coherent control of optical information with matter wave dynamics. Nature 2007;445(7128):623–6.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Bradshaw N, Neher SB, Booth DS, Walter P. Signal sequences activate the catalytic switch of SRP RNA. Science 2009;323(5910):127–30.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hübschmann H-J. Handbook of GC-MS. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA; 2015.

An edited book

Hua G, Jégou H, editors. Computer Vision – ECCV 2016 Workshops: Amsterdam, The Netherlands, October 8-10 and 15-16, 2016, Proceedings, Part III. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Hennessy O, Kane C. Starting with a Game Design Document: A Methodology for Success. In: Bondo J, Fothergill A, Greenstone B, et al., editors. iPhone Games Projects. Berkeley, CA: Apress; 2009. p. 129–52.

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 New England Journal of Medicine.

Blog post

Carpineti A. The Farthest Stars In The Milky Way Might Come From Another Galaxy [Internet]. IFLScience. 2017 [cited 2018 Oct 30];Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/space/the-farthest-stars-in-the-milky-way-might-come-from-another-galaxy/

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. Air Traffic Control: The Interim Support Plan Does Not Meet FAA’s Needs. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1990.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Shamsai M. Prefabricated Cage System for Reinforcing Concrete Members. 2006;

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

Rich N. The New Origin of the Species. New York Times. 2014;MM24.

In-text citations

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

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 New England Journal of Medicine
Abbreviation	N. Engl. J. Med.
ISSN (print)	0028-4793
ISSN (online)	1533-4406
Scope	General Medicine