How to format your references using the Journal of Medical Internet Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR). 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

Fishell G. Hurricane Sandy: After the deluge. Nature 2013 Apr 25;496(7446):421–422. PMID:23619676

A journal article with 2 authors

Gheiratmand M, Mullen KT. Orientation tuning in human colour vision at detection threshold. Sci Rep 2014 Mar 5;4:4285. PMID:24594749

A journal article with 3 authors

Paraje G, Sadana R, Karam G. Public health. Increasing international gaps in health-related publications. Science 2005 May 13;308(5724):959–960. PMID:15890863

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Huo M-X, Nie W, Hutchinson DAW, Kwek LC. A solenoidal synthetic field and the non-Abelian Aharonov-Bohm effects in neutral atoms. Sci Rep 2014 Aug 8;4:5992. PMID:25103877

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Machner H. Einführung in die Kern- und Elementarteilchenphysik. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA; 2005. ISBN:9783527662371

An edited book

Brambilla M, Tokuda T, Tolksdorf R, editors. Web Engineering: 12th International Conference, ICWE 2012, Berlin, Germany, July 23-27, 2012. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2012. ISBN:9783642317521

A chapter in an edited book

Tisi M, Martínez S, Jouault F, Cabot J. Lazy Execution of Model-to-Model Transformations. In: Whittle J, Clark T, Kühne T, editors. Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems: 14th International Conference, MODELS 2011, Wellington, New Zealand, October 16-21, 2011 Proceedings Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2011. p. 32–46. ISBN:9783642244841

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 Internet Research.

Blog post

Davis J. A Quarter Of All Pregnancies Globally End In Termination. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2016. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/quarter-all-pregnancies-globally-end-termination/ [accessed Oct 30, 2018]

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. NOAA Fleet: Responses to Post-Hearing Questions. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1999 Mar. Report No.: GGD-99-60R.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Rich DW. Examining the relationship of values-based management in performance evaluations [Doctoral dissertation]. [Scottsdale, AZ]: Northcentral University; 2009.

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

Mann J. A Foreign Policy Team of Rivals. New York Times 2016 Dec 17;SR11.

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 Internet Research
Abbreviation	J. Med. Internet Res.
ISSN (print)	1439-4456
ISSN (online)	1438-8871
Scope	Health Informatics