How to format your references using the Journal of Medical Case Reports citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Medical Case Reports. 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	Download the output style file
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

1. Keimer B. Physics. Broken Cooper pairs caught bouncing around. Science. 2003;300:1381–2.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Baker MB, Peter T. Small-scale cloud processes and climate. Nature. 2008;451:299–300.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Brennan MD, Cheong R, Levchenko A. Systems biology. How information theory handles cell signaling and uncertainty. Science. 2012;338:334–5.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Mak W, Nesterova TB, de Napoles M, Appanah R, Yamanaka S, Otte AP, et al. Reactivation of the paternal X chromosome in early mouse embryos. Science. 2004;303:666–9.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Baker KR. Optimization Modeling with Spreadsheets. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2011.

An edited book

1. Haemmerlé O, Stapleton G, Faron Zucker C, editors. Graph-Based Representation and Reasoning: 22nd International Conference on Conceptual Structures, ICCS 2016, Annecy, France, July 5-7, 2016, Proceedings. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Waldron S. Group Frames. In: Casazza PG, Kutyniok G, editors. Finite Frames: Theory and Applications. Boston, MA: Birkhäuser; 2013. p. 171–91.

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 Journal of Medical Case Reports.

Blog post

1. Carpineti A. Astronomers Spot Closest Star In Orbit Around A Black Hole. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2017.

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. Issues Raised concerning the Report, “The National School Lunch Program: Is It Working?” Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1977 Nov. Report No.: PAD-78-43.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Brown ML. Examining leadership and the laminated glass ceiling: Gender and leadership traits [Doctoral dissertation]. [Scottsdale, AZ]: Northcentral University; 2010.

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. Goldman R. Saudis Arrest Woman Seen In Miniskirt In Video Clip. New York Times. 2017 Jul 18;A4.

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	Journal of Medical Case Reports
Abbreviation	J. Med. Case Rep.
ISSN (online)	1752-1947
Scope	General Medicine