How to format your references using the Mathematical Medicine and Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Mathematical Medicine and Biology. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most reference managers.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Shlesinger, M.F. (2000) Statistical mechanics. Exploring phase space. Nature, 405, 135, 137.
A journal article with 2 authors
Trenberth, K.E. & Otto-Bliesner, B.L. (2003) Paleoclimate. Toward integrated reconstruction of past climates. Science, 300, 589–590.
A journal article with 3 authors
Murray, B.J., Knopf, D.A., & Bertram, A.K. (2005) The formation of cubic ice under conditions relevant to Earth’s atmosphere. Nature, 434, 202–205.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Xu, Q., Liu, F., Liu, Y., Cui, K., Feng, X., Zhang, W., & Huang, Y. (2013) Broadband light absorption enhancement in dye-sensitized solar cells with Au-Ag alloy popcorn nanoparticles. Sci. Rep., 3, 2112.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Brown, M.A. & Kaplan, L. (2012) The Advanced Practice Registered Nurse as a Prescriber. West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An edited book
Janjuha-Jivraj, S. (2016) Championing Women Leaders: Beyond Sponsorship. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.
A chapter in an edited book
Nakayama, Y. (2015) Formal Analysis of Epistemic Modalities and Conditionals Based on Logic of Belief Structures. New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence: JSAI-isAI 2014 Workshops, LENLS, JURISIN, and GABA, Kanagawa, Japan, October 27-28, 2014, Revised Selected Papers, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (Murata, T., Mineshima, K., & Bekki, D. eds). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 37–52.

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 Mathematical Medicine and Biology.

Blog post
Fang, J. (2015) What’s Happening To The Flowers At Fukushima? IFLScience.

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 (1981) Cooperative Extension Service’s Mission and Federal Role Need Congressional Clarification ( No. CED-81-119). U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
Andrews, A. (2013) Yoga as mental health treatment for cancer survivors: A grant proposal (Doctoral dissertation).

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
Kenigsberg, B. (2017) Film Series. New York Times, C20.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Shlesinger, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Shlesinger, 2000; Trenberth & Otto-Bliesner, 2003).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

  • Two authors: (Trenberth & Otto-Bliesner, 2003)
  • Three or more authors: (Xu et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal titleMathematical Medicine and Biology
AbbreviationMath. Med. Biol.
ISSN (print)1477-8599
ISSN (online)1477-8602
ScopeGeneral Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
General Environmental Science
General Immunology and Microbiology
Applied Mathematics
Modelling and Simulation
General Medicine
General Neuroscience
Pharmacology

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