How to format your references using the Acta Pharmacologica Sinica citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Acta Pharmacologica Sinica. 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	Download the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX 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

Clary, D. C. Chemistry. Geometric phase in chemical reactions. Science 309, 1195–1196 (2005).

A journal article with 2 authors

Makino, S. & Suzuki, M. Bacterial genomic reorganization upon DNA replication. Science 292, 803 (2001).

A journal article with 3 authors

Christian, W., Esquembre, F. & Barbato, L. SPORE series winner. Open source physics. Science 334, 1077–1078 (2011).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Dong, C. et al. Wza the translocon for E. coli capsular polysaccharides defines a new class of membrane protein. Nature 444, 226–229 (2006).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Banerjee, S. & Lawrence, V. Managing Dementia in a Multicultural Society. (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2010).

An edited book

Max, M. D. Economic Geology of Natural Gas Hydrate. vol. 9 (Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2006).

A chapter in an edited book

Eberspächer, J. & Schollmeier, R. 5. First and Second Generation of Peer-to-Peer Systems. in Peer-to-Peer Systems and Applications (eds. Steinmetz, R. & Wehrle, K.) 35–56 (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2005).

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 Acta Pharmacologica Sinica.

Blog post

Carpineti, A. More Bright Galaxies Discovered In The Early Universe. 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. DCPS: Attorneys’ Fees for Access to Special Education Opportunities. (2002).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Forget, M. A. Tumor Angiogenesis is all Tied up in Tie2-Expressing Macrophages. (Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 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

Gorman, J. Male Cuttlefish Tangle in Rare Physical Conflict. New York Times D4 (2017).

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	Acta Pharmacologica Sinica
Abbreviation	Acta Pharmacol. Sin.
ISSN (print)	1671-4083
ISSN (online)	1745-7254
Scope	General Medicine Pharmacology (medical) Pharmacology