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

McMurray B. Defusing the childhood vocabulary explosion. Science. 2007 Aug 3;317(5838):631.

A journal article with 2 authors

Voss R, Nelemans G. Discovery of the progenitor of the type Ia supernova 2007on. Nature. 2008 Feb 14;451(7180):802–4.

A journal article with 3 authors

Little AF, van Oppen MJH, Willis BL. Flexibility in algal endosymbioses shapes growth in reef corals. Science. 2004 Jun 4;304(5676):1492–4.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Zhang X, Ge X, Yu Y, Zhang Y, Wu Y, Luan Y, et al. Identification of three novel mutations in the FRMD7 gene for X-linked idiopathic congenital nystagmus. Sci Rep. 2014 Jan 17;4:3745.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Knudsen S. Cancer Diagnostics with DNA Microarrays. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2005.

An edited book

MacDonald Gibson J. Environmental Burden of Disease Assessment. Brammer A, Davidson C, Folley T, Launay F, Thomsen J, editors. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2013. XXXII, 489 p. 109 illus., 23 illus. in color. (Environmental Science and Technology Library; vol. 24).

A chapter in an edited book

Nikolos IK, Zografos ES, Brintaki AN. UAV Path Planning Using Evolutionary Algorithms. In: Chahl JS, Jain LC, Mizutani A, Sato-Ilic M, editors. Innovations in Intelligent Machines - 1. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2007. p. 77–111. (Kacprzyk J, editor. Studies in Computational Intelligence).

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

Andrew E. Critically Endangered Parrot Humps Zoologist. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2014.

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. Homeland Security: Information Technology Funding and Associated Management Issues. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2002 Dec. Report No.: GAO-03-250.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Garcia M. College preparedness program for high school students in South Los Angeles, California: A grant proposal [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2015.

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

Corkery M. Walmart Sticks With Arkansas Headquarters as Amazon Plays the Field. New York Times. 2017 Sep 15;B4.

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

Research and Writing Guides