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

Sabadini R. Paleoclimate. Ice sheet collapse and sea level change. Science. 2002 Mar 29;295(5564):2376–7.

A journal article with 2 authors

Franklin CE, Axelsson M. An actively controlled heart valve. Nature. 2000 Aug 24;406(6798):847–8.

A journal article with 3 authors

Andersson JO, Doolittle WF, Nesbø CL. Genomics. Are there bugs in our genome? Science. 2001 Jun 8;292(5523):1848–50.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Court FA, Sherman DL, Pratt T, Garry EM, Ribchester RR, Cottrell DF, et al. Restricted growth of Schwann cells lacking Cajal bands slows conduction in myelinated nerves. Nature. 2004 Sep 9;431(7005):191–5.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kerzner H, Belack C. Managing Complex Projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2010.

An edited book

Jiang X, Hornegger J, Koch R, editors. Pattern Recognition: 36th German Conference, GCPR 2014, Münster, Germany, September 2-5, 2014, Proceedings. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2014. XVIII, 775 p. 310 illus. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; vol. 8753).

A chapter in an edited book

Booth JG, Wells MT. Biometrics and Statistical Science at Cornell. In: Agresti A, Meng XL, editors. Strength in Numbers: The Rising of Academic Statistics Departments in the U S. New York, NY: Springer; 2013. p. 39–50.

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. Ocean Acidity Measured From Space. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015.

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: DOD’s Acquisition Policies and Guidance Need to Incorporate Additional Best Practices and Controls. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2004 Jul. Report No.: GAO-04-722.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Huber JA. Building an army: A corollary study of group interaction and group productivity [Doctoral dissertation]. [Minneapolis, MN]: Capella University; 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

Hubbard B. Iran and Saudis Trade Barbs With Pilgrimage Set to Start. New York Times. 2016 Sep 7;A9.

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

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