How to format your references using the Cancer Research citation style

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

Bohannon J. The Gonzo Scientist. Calling all dancing scientists! Science. 2010;328:1226.

A journal article with 2 authors

Lloyd K, White J. Democratizing clinical research. Nature. 2011;474:277–8.

A journal article with 3 authors

Solanki SK, Schüssler M, Fligge M. Evolution of the Sun’s large-scale magnetic field since the Maunder minimum. Nature. 2000;408:445–7.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Kay S, Hahn S, Marois E, Hause G, Bonas U. A bacterial effector acts as a plant transcription factor and induces a cell size regulator. Science. 2007;318:648–51.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Retherford RD, Choe MK. Statistical Models for Causal Analysis. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 1993.

An edited book

Laghi A. La cardio-TC. Rengo M, editor. Milano: Springer; 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

Schanz D, Schanz S. Tax Facts. In: Schanz S, editor. Business Taxation and Financial Decisions. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2011. page 137–58.

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 Research.

Blog post

Andrews R. Ghost Ship Washes Up On Liberian Coast With Crew Missing. IFLScience. 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. Information Technology: Federal Agencies Need to Address Aging Legacy Systems. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2016 May. Report No.: GAO-16-468.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Bockler T. Legal advocacy program for low-income children with disabilities: A grant proposal [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2014.

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

Crawford S. Trump’s Big Telecom Giveaway. New York Times. 2017;A17.

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 Research
Abbreviation	Cancer Res.
ISSN (print)	0008-5472
ISSN (online)	1538-7445
Scope	Cancer Research Oncology

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