How to format your references using the West Virginia Medical Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for West Virginia 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

Nobrega MA. Journal club. A human geneticist explores the ways that genes are regulated. Nature. 2010 Jul 1;466(7302):11.

A journal article with 2 authors

Norton DA, Didham RK. Comment on “Why are there so many species of herbivorous insects in tropical rainforests?” Science. 2007 Mar 23;315(5819):1666; author reply 1666.

A journal article with 3 authors

Gitlin L, Karelsky S, Andino R. Short interfering RNA confers intracellular antiviral immunity in human cells. Nature. 2002 Jul 25;418(6896):430–4.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Guo X, Gao J, Li F, Wang J. Evidence of horizontal transfer of non-autonomous Lep1 Helitrons facilitated by host-parasite interactions. Sci Rep. 2014 May 30;4:5119.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

El-Haik B, Roy DM. Service Design for Six Sigma. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2005.

An edited book

Oliveira LB. Analysis and Design of Quadrature Oscillators. Fernandes JR, Filanovsky IM, Verhoeven CJM, Silva MM, editors. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2008. XIII, 162 p. (Analog Circuits and Signal Processing Series).

A chapter in an edited book

Glas E. On the Role of Thought-Experiments in Mathematical Discovery. In: Meheus J, Nickles T, editors. Models of Discovery and Creativity. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2009. p. 57–64.

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 West Virginia Medical Journal.

Blog post

Luntz S. Weather Detected On A World With Sapphire And Ruby Clouds. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2016.

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. Information Technology: Social Security Administration’s Data Exchanges Support Current Programs, but Better Planning Is Needed to Meet Future Demands. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2009 Sep. Report No.: GAO-09-966.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Hebel O. Parental involvement in the individual educational program for Israeli students with disabilities [Doctoral dissertation]. [Phoenix, AZ]: University of Phoenix; 2012.

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

Brantley B. A Mythic Force of Anger, Raging in Wales. New York Times. 2017 May 17;C6.

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	West Virginia Medical Journal
Abbreviation	W. V. Med. J.
ISSN (print)	0043-3284
Scope	General Medicine