How to format your references using the World Medical Journal citation style

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

Holden C. DIVERSITY: Parity as a Goal Sparks Bitter Battle. Science. 2000 Jul 21;289(5478):380.

A journal article with 2 authors

Rikken GL, Raupach E. Enantioselective magnetochiral photochemistry. Nature. 2000 Jun 22;405(6789):932–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

Gertz J, Siggia ED, Cohen BA. Analysis of combinatorial cis-regulation in synthetic and genomic promoters. Nature. 2009 Jan 8;457(7226):215–8.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Schaffer E, Thurn-Albrecht T, Russell TP, Steiner U. Electrically induced structure formation and pattern transfer. Nature. 2000 Feb 24;403(6772):874–7.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ash MK. The Mary Kay Way. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2008.

An edited book

Magedanz T, Madeira ERM, Dini P, editors. Operations and Management in IP-Based Networks: 5th IEEE International Workshop on IP Operations and Management, IPOM 2005, Barcelona, Spain, October 26-28, 2005. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2005. X, 214 p. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; vol. 3751).

A chapter in an edited book

Pichler F, Cifrain M. Application-Related Battery Modelling: From Empirical to Mechanistic Approaches. In: Thaler A, Watzenig D, editors. Automotive Battery Technology. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2014. p. 53–69. (SpringerBriefs in Applied Sciences and Technology).

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 World Medical Journal.

Blog post

Andrews R. Turtles Evolved Shells To Help Them Dig, Not For Protection. 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. Aviation Security: Systematic Planning Needed to Optimize the Deployment of Checked Baggage Screening Systems. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2005 Mar. Report No.: GAO-05-365.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Crozier CF. A qualitative study of teacher job satisfaction in an evolutionary and mandated change environment [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

Dolnick B. Cold Showers. New York Times. 2017 Jul 20;MM26.

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	World Medical Journal
ISSN (print)	0049-8122
Scope