How to format your references using the African Journal of Primary Health Care and Family Medicine citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for African Journal of Primary Health Care and Family Medicine (PHCFM). 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Nutman AP. Comment on ‘Zircon thermometer reveals minimum melting conditions on earliest Earth’ II. Science 2006;311(5762):779; author reply 779.

A journal article with 2 authors

Sato M, Sato K. Degradation of paternal mitochondria by fertilization-triggered autophagy in C. elegans embryos. Science 2011;334(6059):1141–1144.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kim S-H, Kim H, Kim NJ. Brittle intermetallic compound makes ultrastrong low-density steel with large ductility. Nature 2015;518(7537):77–79.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Wu L, Li S, He W, Teng D, Wang K, Ye C. Automatic release of silicon nanowire arrays with a high integrity for flexible electronic devices. Sci Rep 2014;4:3940.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Barron EN. Game Theory. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2013;

An edited book

Huang D-S, Li K, Irwin GW, editors. Intelligent Control and Automation: International Conference on Intelligent Computing, ICIC 2006 Kunming, China, August 16–19, 2006. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2006;

A chapter in an edited book

Alvarez JA, Tangpricha V. Vitamin D and Bone Health. In: Yen EH, Leonard AR, editors. Nutrition in Cystic Fibrosis: A Guide for Clinicians. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2015; p. 49–65.

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 African Journal of Primary Health Care and Family Medicine.

Blog post

Andrew E. New Crystal Can Absorb Huge Amounts Of Oxygen And Store It For Later [Homepage on the Internet]. IFLScience. 2014 [cited 2018 Oct 30];Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/new-material-absorbs-oxygen-stores-it-later/

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. ADP Systems: SSA Efforts in Implementing Its Field Office Modernization. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1989;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Tasoff AJ. Quantifying the Genetic Capacity of California Grunion (Leuresthes tenuis) to Adapt to Ocean Acidification. 2017;

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

Wagner J. Forget the Waist; It’s More About the Wrist. New York Times. 2016;B10.

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	African Journal of Primary Health Care and Family Medicine
ISSN (print)	2071-2928
ISSN (online)	2071-2936
Scope