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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Pan African Medical Journal (PAMJ). 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

Webster PJ. Meteorology: Improve weather forecasts for the developing world. Nature. 2013;493(7430):17–19.

A journal article with 2 authors

Siddiqi I, Clarke J. Physics. Entangled solid-state circuits. Science. 2006;313(5792):1400–1401.

A journal article with 3 authors

Johnson CL, Constable CG, Tauxe L. Geophysics. Mapping long-term changes in Earth’s magnetic field. Science. 2003;300(5628):2044–2045.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Cassidy C, Singh V, Grammatikopoulos P, Djurabekova F, Nordlund K, Sowwan M. Inoculation of silicon nanoparticles with silver atoms. Sci Rep. 2013;3:3083.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Willatzen M, Lew Yan Voon LC. Separable Boundary-Value Problems in Physics. 2011. Weinheim, Germany. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Öztürk M, Böer B, Barth H-J, Clüsener-Godt M, Khan MA, Breckle S-W (eds.). Sabkha Ecosystems: Volume III: Africa and Southern Europe. 2011. Dordrecht. Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Kühne K, Sadowski D. Scandalous Co-determination. In: Brink A, editor. Corporate Governance and Business Ethics. 2011. Dordrecht. Springer Netherlands: 75–87.

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 Pan African Medical Journal.

Blog post

Andrew E. Why Some People Have Trouble Telling Left From Right (And Why It’s So Important). IFLScience. 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/why-some-people-have-trouble-telling-left-right-and-why-it-s-so-important/. Accessed 30 October 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

Government Accountability Office. Transportation Accessibility: Lack of Data and Limited Enforcement Options Limit Federal Oversight. 2007. Washington, DC. U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Todman JV. Applicability of health care leadership competence and leadership behaviors for women’s achieving health care executive status. 2016.

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

Stewart JB. Now on Broadway, an Economics Lesson. New York Times. 2017;B1.

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 Pan African Medical Journal
Abbreviation	Pan Afr. Med. J.
ISSN (online)	1937-8688
Scope	General Medicine