How to format your references using the Cancer Discovery citation style

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

Kurth R. Obituary: Maurice R. Hilleman (1919-2005). Nature. 2005;434:1083.

A journal article with 2 authors

Peers G, Price NM. Copper-containing plastocyanin used for electron transport by an oceanic diatom. Nature. 2006;441:341–4.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ji Z, Gao H, Yu H. CELL DIVISION CYCLE. Kinetochore attachment sensed by competitive Mps1 and microtubule binding to Ndc80C. Science. 2015;348:1260–4.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Yamaguchi N, Oyama M, Kozuka-Hata H, Inoue J-I. Involvement of A20 in the molecular switch that activates the non-canonical NF-кB pathway. Sci Rep. 2013;3:2568.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Peters M, Glasser D, Hildebrandt D, Kauchali S. Membrane Process Design Using Residue Curve Maps. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2011.

An edited book

Kelemen A, Abraham A, Liang Y, editors. Computational Intelligence in Medical Informatics. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

Casado-Sanz E, Barco-Laakso R, Antuña S, Rodríguez-Merchán EC. Shoulder Surgery in Hemophilia. In: Rodríguez-Merchán EC, editor. Joint Surgery in the Adult Patient with Hemophilia. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015. page 37–42.

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 Cancer Discovery.

Blog post

Andrew E. Watch Elon Musk’s Moving “Solid Metal Snake” Charge A Tesla Car. IFLScience. 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. Air Traffic Control: Efforts to Modernize Oceanic System Delayed. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1991 Jan. Report No.: IMTEC-91-2.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Obeng-Dompreh S. The impact of servicemembers’ learning styles and computer anxiety levels on computer -mediated learning [Doctoral dissertation]. [Phoenix, AZ]: University of Phoenix; 2008.

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

Feeney K. If It’s on a Bun, It’s a Burger. New York Times. 2009;NJ13.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

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	Cancer Discovery
Abbreviation	Cancer Discov.
ISSN (print)	2159-8274
ISSN (online)	2159-8290
Scope	Oncology