How to format your references using the South African Medical Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for South African Medical Journal (SAMJ). 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

Linden J. Cell biology. Purinergic chemotaxis. Science 2006;314(5806):1689–1690.

A journal article with 2 authors

Grant PR, Grant BR. Evolutionary biology: speciation undone. Nature 2014;507(7491):178–179.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kelber A, Balkenius A, Warrant EJ. Scotopic colour vision in nocturnal hawkmoths. Nature 2002;419(6910):922–925.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

del Hoyo GM, Martín P, Vargas HH, Ruiz S, Arias CF, Ardavín C. Characterization of a common precursor population for dendritic cells. Nature 2002;415(6875):1043–1047.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Le Chevalier F, Lesselier D, Staraj R. Non-standard Antennas. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc; 2011.

An edited book

Mehling H. Heat and cold storage with PCM: An up to date introduction into basics and applications. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

Zubair M, Mughal MJ, Naqvi QA. Electromagnetic Wave Propagation in Fractional Space. In: Mughal MJ, Naqvi QA, editors. Electromagnetic Fields and Waves in Fractional Dimensional Space. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2012. page 27–60.

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 South African Medical Journal.

Blog post

Andrew E. Bomb Sniffing Dogs Detect Prostate Cancer With More Than 95% Accuracy [Internet]. IFLScience 2015;Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/bomb-sniffing-dogs-detect-prostate-cancer-more-95-accuracy/

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. Desert Shield and Desert Storm Reports and Testimonies: 1991-93. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1994.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Jiang W. Advanced techniques for semantic concept detection in general videos. 2010;

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

Crow K. When the City Says Show Me, It Means It. New York Times 2002;146.

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	South African Medical Journal
Abbreviation	S. Afr. Med. J.
ISSN (print)	0256-9574
ISSN (online)	2078-5135
Scope	General Medicine