How to format your references using the Cancer Translational Medicine citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Cancer Translational Medicine (CTN). 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Smaglik P. Building cooperation New York. Nature 2002;419 (6905):4-5.

A journal article with 2 authors

Baumann P, Cech TR. Pot1, the putative telomere end-binding protein in fission yeast and humans. Science 2001;292 (5519):1171-75.

A journal article with 3 authors

Juanes-Marcos JC, Althorpe SC, Wrede E. Theoretical study of geometric phase effects in the hydrogen-exchange reaction. Science 2005;309 (5738):1227-30.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Arnalds O, Thorarinsdottir EF, Thorsson J, Waldhauserova PD, Agustsdottir AM. An extreme wind erosion event of the fresh Eyjafjallajökull 2010 volcanic ash. Sci Rep 2013;3:1257.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Dormieux L, Kondo D. Micromechanics of Fracture and Damage. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2016.

An edited book

Imam SK, Ahmad SI, eds. Thyroid Disorders: Basic Science and Clinical Practice. 1st ed. 2016. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Faude O, Donath L. Thermoregulation During Marathon Running. In: Zinner C, Sperlich B, editors. Marathon Running: Physiology, Psychology, Nutrition and Training Aspects. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. p. 69-81.

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 Translational Medicine.

Blog post

Andrew E. Why Do Elephants Rarely Get Cancer? IFLScience October 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. Department of Education: Challenges in Promoting Access and Excellence in Education. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1997.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Ehsani S. Design of a Teleoperation – Based Robotic Surgical System. 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

Ruiz RR. Sharapova Suspension Is Cut by Nine Months. New York Times. October 5, 2016:B8.

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	Cancer Translational Medicine
Abbreviation	Cancer Transl. Med.
ISSN (print)	2395-3977
ISSN (online)	2395-3012
Scope