How to format your references using the North Carolina Medical Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for North Carolina Medical Journal. 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

Gershon D. Are mega-mergers good medicine for the pharmaceutical industry? Nature. 2000;405(6783):257-258.

A journal article with 2 authors

Eddy CR Jr, Gaskill DK. Materials science. Silicon carbide as a platform for power electronics. Science. 2009;324(5933):1398-1400.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kennedy M, Mrofka D, von der Borch C. Snowball Earth termination by destabilization of equatorial permafrost methane clathrate. Nature. 2008;453(7195):642-645.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Song J, Xu L, Xing R, et al. Synthesis of Au/graphene oxide composites for selective and sensitive electrochemical detection of ascorbic acid. Sci Rep. 2014;4:7515.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Guzinski J, Abu-Rub H, Strankowski P. Variable Speed AC Drives with Inverter Output Filters. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2015.

An edited book

Kim TH, Ramos C, Abawajy J, Kang BH, Ślęzak D, Adeli H, eds. Computer Applications for Modeling, Simulation, and Automobile: International Conferences, MAS and ASNT 2012, Held in Conjunction with GST 2012, Jeju Island, Korea, November 28-December 2, 2012. Proceedings. Vol 341. Springer; 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

Kulich M, Krajník T, Přeučil L, Duckett T. To Explore or to Exploit? Learning Humans’ Behaviour to Maximize Interactions with Them. In: Hodicky J, ed. Modelling and Simulation for Autonomous Systems: Third International Workshop, MESAS 2016, Rome, Italy, June 15-16, 2016, Revised Selected Papers. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer International Publishing; 2016:48-63.

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 North Carolina Medical Journal.

Blog post

Fang J. New Species Of Terror Bird Discovered in Argentina. IFLScience. April 10, 2015. Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/skeleton-new-terror-bird-species-discovered-argentina/

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. FAA Staffing: Better Strategy Needed to Ensure Facilities Are Properly Staffed. U.S. Government Printing Office; 1991.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Clater MJ. Interposed between God and Man: Agency in the Requiems of Berlioz and Fauré. Doctoral dissertation. Indiana 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

Swansburg J. Men of Summer. New York Times. March 31, 2017:BR14.

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	North Carolina Medical Journal
Abbreviation	N. C. Med. J.
ISSN (print)	0029-2559
Scope	General Medicine