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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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
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.
Clawson D. Infrastructure. Tenure and the future of the university. Science. 2009 May 29;324(5931):1147–8.
A journal article with 2 authors
1.
Long JL, Chhetri DK. Tissue engineering. Restoring voice. Science. 2015 Nov 20;350(6263):908–9.
A journal article with 3 authors
1.
Walsh KJ, Richardson DC, Michel P. Rotational breakup as the origin of small binary asteroids. Nature. 2008 Jul 10;454(7201):188–91.
A journal article with 7 or more authors
1.
Callaway E, Castelvecchi D, Cyranoski D, Gibney E, Ledford H, Lee JJ, et al. 2017 in news: The science events that shaped the year. Nature. 2017 Dec 21;552(7685):304–7.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
1.
Smith DA, van de Waterbeemd H, Walker DK. Pharmacokinetics and Metabolism in Drug Design: SMITH: PHARMACOKINETICS AND METABOLISM IN DRUG DESIGN O-BK. Weinheim, FRG: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA; 2006. (Methods and Principles in Medicinal Chemistry).
An edited book
1.
Al-Haj Baddar SW. Designing Sorting Networks: A New Paradigm. Batcher KE, editor. New York, NY: Springer; 2011. XII, 136 p.
A chapter in an edited book
1.
Wigley FM. Ischemic Digital Ulcers. In: Mayes MD, editor. A Visual Guide to Scleroderma and Approach to Treatment. New York, NY: Springer; 2014. p. 51–62.

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
1.
Hale T. Nearly Half Of US Men Have A Genital HPV Infection [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2017 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/nearly-half-of-us-men-have-a-genital-hpv-infection/

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. Engineering Research Centers: NSF Program Management and Industry Sponsorship. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1988 Aug. Report No.: RCED-88-177.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
1.
Cordova M. The impact of a teacher training program on student engagement [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2009.

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.
Wagner J. Two Familiar Faces Rejoin Mets’ Bullpen. New York Times. 2017 Feb 4;D5.

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 titleWest Virginia Medical Journal
AbbreviationW. V. Med. J.
ISSN (print)0043-3284
ScopeGeneral Medicine

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