How to format your references using the The Ceylon Medical Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Ceylon 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

Simmons JG. Timeline: Lindau and the zeitgeist. Nature. 2010 Oct 14;467(7317):S14-5.

A journal article with 2 authors

Artursson P, Knight SD. Structural biology. Breaking the intestinal barrier to deliver drugs. Science. 2015 Feb 13;347(6223):716–7.

A journal article with 3 authors

Gupta R, He Z, Luan S. Functional relationship of cytochrome c(6) and plastocyanin in Arabidopsis. Nature. 2002 May 30;417(6888):567–71.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Mold M, Eriksson H, Siesjö P, Darabi A, Shardlow E, Exley C. Unequivocal identification of intracellular aluminium adjuvant in a monocytic THP-1 cell line. Sci Rep. 2014 Sep 5;4:6287.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lee M, Bieker G. Mastering. Indianapolis, IN, USA: Wiley Publishing, Inc.; 2009.

An edited book

Rasmussen LM, Iltis A, Cherry MJ, editors. At the Foundations of Bioethics and Biopolitics: Critical Essays on the Thought of H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. 1st ed. 2015. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015. XXIII, 284 p. 1 illus. in color. (Philosophy and Medicine; vol. 125).

A chapter in an edited book

Mayer MP. Chaperones in the Morphogenesis of Viruses. In: Pockley AG, Calderwood SK, Santoro MG, editors. Prokaryotic and Eukaryotic Heat Shock Proteins in Infectious Disease. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2010. p. 85–105. (Heat Shock Proteins).

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 The Ceylon Medical Journal.

Blog post

Andrew E. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2014 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Headway Made Toward HIV Vaccine. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/headway-made-toward-hiv-vaccine/

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. Protest Against Rejection of Bid. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1973 Aug. Report No.: B-178720.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Obi CN. Evaluation of feeding varying levels of digestible lysine on broiler breeder male reproductive characteristics and body weight changes [Doctoral dissertation]. [Mississippi State, MS]: Mississippi State University; 2012.

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

Belson K, Pilon M. Concern Raised Over Painkiller’s Use in Sports. New York Times. 2012 Apr 14;A1.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

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	The Ceylon Medical Journal
Abbreviation	Ceylon Med. J.
ISSN (print)	0009-0875
Scope	General Medicine