How to format your references using the Medicine citation style

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

Carmeliet P. Biomedicine. Clotting factors build blood vessels. Science 2001; 293: 1602–4.

A journal article with 2 authors

Zénon A, Krauzlis RJ. Attention deficits without cortical neuronal deficits. Nature 2012; 489: 434–7.

A journal article with 3 authors

Skipper M, Dhand R, Campbell P. Presenting ENCODE. Nature 2012; 489: 45.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Hölker F, Beare D, Dörner H, et al. Comment on ‘Impacts of biodiversity loss on ocean ecosystem services’. Science 2007; 316: 1285; author reply 1285.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Murray A. The Complete Software Project Manager. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2015.

An edited book

Maricau E. Analog IC Reliability in Nanometer CMOS. New York, NY: Springer, 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

Hölck O, Wunderle B. Microelectronics Packaging Materials: Investigating the Influence of Moisture by Molecular Dynamics Simulations. In: Wymyslowski A, Iwamoto N, Yuen M, Fan H, eds. Molecular Modeling and Multiscaling Issues for Electronic Material Applications: Volume 2. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2015.

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 Medicine.

Blog post

Andrew E. Algae Virus Can Infect Humans And Slow Brain Activity. IFLScience 2014. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/algae-virus-humans-found-drain-brain-power/ (accessed 30 Oct 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. Telecommunications: State and Federal Actions to Curb Slamming and Cramming. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1999.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Pundir B. Surface pressure fluctuations due to an impinging underexpanded supersonic jet. 2011.

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

Cooper M. Philip Gossett, Scholar, 75; Revived Lost Opera Scores. New York Times 15 Jun 2017; B14.

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	Medicine
Abbreviation	Medicine (Abingdon)
ISSN (print)	1357-3039
ISSN (online)	1878-9390
Scope	General Medicine