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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Medical Journal of Australia. 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

Baughman RH. Chemistry. Dangerously seeking linear carbon. Science. 2006 May 19;312(5776):1009–110.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hamm JM, Hess O. Physics. Two two-dimensional materials are better than one. Science. 2013 Jun 14;340(6138):1298–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

Worthylake DK, Rossman KL, Sondek J. Crystal structure of Rac1 in complex with the guanine nucleotide exchange region of Tiam1. Nature. 2000 Dec 7;408(6813):682–8.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Sekar N, Clark W, Dobson A, Coelho PCF, Hannam PM, Hepworth R, et al. Ivory crisis: Growing no-trade consensus. Science. 2018 Apr 20;360(6386):276–7.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lane C. Magnolia. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell; 2011.

An edited book

Hanjalić K, Krol RV de, Lekić A, editors. Sustainable Energy Technologies: Options and Prospects. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2008. XXIII, 333 p.

A chapter in an edited book

Sullivan P, Clarke D, Clarke B. Using Mathematical Tasks Arising from Contexts. In: Clarke D, Clarke B, editors. Teaching with Tasks for Effective Mathematics Learning. New York, NY: Springer; 2013. p. 39–56.

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 Medical Journal of Australia.

Blog post

Carpineti A. Search For Life Around Weird Star Continues. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2016.

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. University Funding: Patterns of Distribution of Federal Research Funds to Universities. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1987 Feb. Report No.: RCED-87-67BR.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Krutsinger R. Evaluation of Grassland Restoration Success in Illinois Using Indicators of Ecosystem Function [Doctoral dissertation]. [Edwardsville, IL]: Southern Illinois University; 2014.

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

Kelly C. Girding for Anniversary Of Tragedy in Dallas. New York Times. 2012 Nov 25;A29B.

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	The Medical Journal of Australia
Abbreviation	Med. J. Aust.
ISSN (print)	0025-729X
ISSN (online)	1326-5377
Scope	General Medicine