How to format your references using the American Family Physician citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for American Family Physician. 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

Daiger SP. Genetics. Was the Human Genome Project worth the effort? Science. 2005 Apr 15;308(5720):362–4.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ferraro PJ, Kiss A. Ecology. Direct payments to conserve biodiversity. Science. 2002 Nov 29;298(5599):1718–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kaiser SM, Malik HS, Emerman M. Restriction of an extinct retrovirus by the human TRIM5alpha antiviral protein. Science. 2007 Jun 22;316(5832):1756–8.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Brook BW, O’Grady JJ, Chapman AP, Burgman MA, Akçakaya HR, Frankham R. Predictive accuracy of population viability analysis in conservation biology. Nature. 2000 Mar 23;404(6776):385–7.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Tagliani M. The Practical Guide to Wall Street. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2009.

An edited book

Okamoto T, Wang X, editors. Public Key Cryptography – PKC 2007: 10th International Conference on Practice and Theory in Public-Key Cryptography Beijing, China, April 16-20, 2007. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2007. XIV, 498 p. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; vol. 4450).

A chapter in an edited book

Kashef MM, Altmann J. A Cost Model for Hybrid Clouds. In: Vanmechelen K, Altmann J, Rana OF, editors. Economics of Grids, Clouds, Systems, and Services: 8th International Workshop, GECON 2011, Paphos, Cyprus, December 5, 2011, Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2012. p. 46–60. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science).

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 American Family Physician.

Blog post

Andrew E. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Why Mosquitoes Seem To Bite Some People More. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/why-mosquitoes-seem-bite-some-people-more/

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. Air Traffic Control: Inadequate Planning Increases Risk of Computer Failures in Los Angeles. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1990 Jul. Report No.: IMTEC-90-49.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Powell FM. A study of the effects of nanoparticle modification on the thermal, mechanical and hygrothermal performance of carbon/vinyl ester composites [Doctoral dissertation]. [Boca Raton, FL]: Florida Atlantic 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

Southall A. Suspect Pleads Not Guilty in Subway Death. New York Times. 2016 Nov 8;A24.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

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	American Family Physician
ISSN (print)	0002-838X
ISSN (online)	1532-0650
Scope