How to format your references using the Discovery Medicine citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Discovery Medicine. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX syles 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
Jaenike J. Comment on “Impacts of biodiversity loss on ocean ecosystem services.” Science 316(5829):1285; author reply 1285, 2007.
A journal article with 2 authors
Orphanides G, Reinberg D. RNA polymerase II elongation through chromatin. Nature 407(6803):471–475, 2000.
A journal article with 3 authors
Seiffert ER, Simons EL, Attia Y. Fossil evidence for an ancient divergence of lorises and galagos. Nature 422(6930):421–424, 2003.
A journal article with 21 or more authors
Colmone A, Amorim M, Pontier AL, Wang S, Jablonski E, Sipkins DA. Leukemic cells create bone marrow niches that disrupt the behavior of normal hematopoietic progenitor cells. Science 322(5909):1861–1865, 2008.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
McGeough JA. The Engineering of Human Joint Replacements. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2013.
An edited book
Kärkkäinen J, Stoye J (eds.). Combinatorial Pattern Matching: 23rd Annual Symposium, CPM 2012, Helsinki, Finland, July 3-5, 2012. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2012.
A chapter in an edited book
Perez-Ruiz F, Herrero-Beites AM. Prevention and Treatment of Inflammation in Gout. In: Managing Gout in Primary Care. Herrero-Beites AM (ed.). pp.53–66. Springer Healthcare Ltd., Tarporley, 2014.

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 Discovery Medicine.

Blog post
Davis J. Sharks’ Ability To Hunt Could Be Altered Under Climate Change. 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. Developing a Domestic Common Carrier Telecommunications Policy: What Are the Issues? U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1979.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
Alameddine A. Perceptions of executives from seven selected companies of the use of social media in marketing practices. 2013.

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
Wagner J. Dodgers Prevail in a Pitchers’ Duel That Wasn’t. New York Times:D2, 2016.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Jaenike, 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Orphanides and Reinberg, 2000; Jaenike, 2007).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

  • Two authors: (Orphanides and Reinberg, 2000)
  • Three or more authors: (Colmone et al., 2008)

About the journal

Full journal titleDiscovery Medicine
ISSN (print)1539-6509
ISSN (online)1944-7930
Scope

Other styles