This is the Vancouver style for referencing, used at the Univerity of Portsmouth within the School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences and the Radiography departments.

This guide is modelled on Citing Medicine: The NLM Style Guide for Authors, Editors, and Publishers (2nd edition). You may wish to consult this source directly for additional information or examples.

Academic journals are also referred to as peer-reviewed or scholarly journals. Journals are a particular type of periodical. These same rules and examples can be used for magazines and other types of periodicals.

 

Journal titles are abbreviated (to decipher/find correct abbreviations see: PubMed Journals Database). 

 

Cite the journal name that was used at the time of publication. For example, the British Medical Journal officially changed title to BMJ in 1988. Cite articles from 1987 and earlier as Br Med J, not BMJ.


Cite the version you saw. For example, do not cite the print version if you have used the Internet one.