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

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

Vilenkin A. Astronomy. The vacuum energy crisis. Science. 2006;312(5777):1148–1149.

A journal article with 2 authors

Li D, Agha L. Research funding. Big names or big ideas: do peer-review panels select the best science proposals? Science. 2015;348(6233):434–438.

A journal article with 3 authors

Grima JN, Attard D, Gatt R. Materials science. Unusual thermoelastic properties of methanol monohydrate. Science. 2011;331(6018):687–688.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Yen H-Y, Hoi KK, Liko I, Hedger G, Horrell MR, Song W, et al. PtdIns(4,5)P2 stabilizes active states of GPCRs and enhances selectivity of G-protein coupling. Nature. 2018;559(7714):423–427.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ferdjallah M. Introduction to Digital Systems. 2011. Hoboken, NJ. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Vymazal J (ed.). The Role of Natural and Constructed Wetlands in Nutrient Cycling and Retention on the Landscape. 2015. Cham. Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Anochie-Boateng JK, Steyn WJ, Fisher C, Truter L. A Link of Full-Scale Accelerated Pavement Testing to Long-Term Pavement Performance Study in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. In: Aguiar-Moya JP, Vargas-Nordcbeck A, Leiva-Villacorta F, Loría-Salazar LG, editors. The Roles of Accelerated Pavement Testing in Pavement Sustainability: Engineering, Environment, and Economics. 2016. Cham. Springer International Publishing: 67–79.

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 Pan African Medical Journal.

Blog post

Davis J. New Drug Could Protect Against Some Aspects Of Radiation Sickness. IFLScience. 2015.

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. Surface Transportation Security: TSA Has Taken Steps Designed to Develop Processes for Sharing and Analyzing Information and to Improve Rail Security Incident Reporting. 2015. Washington, DC. U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Egan GC. Understanding the reaction mechanism of aluminum nanocomposite thermites. 2015.

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

Hanc J. A Marathon Back Door That Leads to a Cause. New York Times. 2016;SP5.

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	The Pan African Medical Journal
Abbreviation	Pan Afr. Med. J.
ISSN (online)	1937-8688
Scope	General Medicine