How to format your references using the Medical Acupuncture citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Medical Acupuncture (ACU). 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

Ruiz-Casares M. Mental health: Tailor informed-consent processes. Nature 2014;513(7518):304.

A journal article with 2 authors

Brent R, Lok L. Cell biology. A fishing buddy for hypothesis generators. Science 2005;308(5721):504–506.

A journal article with 3 authors

Conard NJ, Malina M, Münzel SC. New flutes document the earliest musical tradition in southwestern Germany. Nature 2009;460(7256):737–740.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Pan J-W, Gasparoni S, Aspelmeyer M, et al. Experimental realization of freely propagating teleported qubits. Nature 2003;421(6924):721–725.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Gutiérrez Í, Meléndez J, Hernández E. Design and Characterization of Integrated Varactors for RF Applications. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: Chichester, UK; 2007.

An edited book

Saunders WB, Landman NH, (eds). Nautilus: The Biology and Paleobiology of a Living Fossil, Reprint with Additions. 2nd ed. Topics in Geobiology. Springer Netherlands: Dordrecht; 2010.

A chapter in an edited book

Kirchschlaeger PG. To What Extent Should the State Protect Human Beings from Themselves? In: Nudging - Possibilities, Limitations and Applications in European Law and Economics. (Mathis K, Tor A. eds) Springer International Publishing: Cham; 2016; pp. 59–67.

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 Medical Acupuncture.

Blog post

Evans K. It Seriously Sucks To Be A Reindeer Right Now. IFLScience; 2016. [Last accessed: 10/30/2018].

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. Consolidated Education Planning: State Education Agencies’ Implementation of Consolidated Planning at the Local Level. U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC; 1999.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Falcone JN. For Pets’ Sake: Is There a Need for Dog Safety Community Education? Doctoral dissertation. Florida Atlantic University: Boca Raton, FL; 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. Two Familiar Faces Rejoin Mets’ Bullpen. New York Times 2017;D5.

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	Medical Acupuncture
Abbreviation	Med. Acupunct.
ISSN (print)	1933-6586
ISSN (online)	1933-6594
Scope	Complementary and alternative medicine