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

Baron N. Stand up for science. Nature 2010;468 (7327):1032-33.

A journal article with 2 authors

Allan RP, Soden BJ. Atmospheric warming and the amplification of precipitation extremes. Science 2008;321 (5895):1481-84.

A journal article with 3 authors

Theise ND, Krause DS, Sharkis S. Comment on “Little evidence for developmental plasticity of adult hematopoietic stem cells.” Science 2003;299 (5611):1317; author reply 1317.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

VanderVen BC, Harder JD, Crick DC, Belisle JT. Export-mediated assembly of mycobacterial glycoproteins parallels eukaryotic pathways. Science 2005;309 (5736):941-43.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Willis DO. Business Basics for Dentists. West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2013.

An edited book

Kovalev M. A Pipelined Multi-Core MIPS Machine: Hardware Implementation and Correctness Proof. Vol 9000. (Müller SM, Paul WJ, editors). Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

Ludlow P. Recursion, Legibility, Use. In: Roeper T, Speas M, editors. Recursion: Complexity in Cognition. Studies in Theoretical Psycholinguistics. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2014. p. 89-112.

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. Can Civilisation Continue? An Earth System Scientist Explains. IFLScience March 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. ADP Telecommunications: HCFA Needs to Expedite Transition to FTS 2000. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1990.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Le Blanc JD. Helping African American Middle School Students Transition to High School with the New Normal Project: A Grant Proposal. 2017.

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

Von Aue M. A Radical Redo for ‘Madama Butterfly.’ New York Times. May 19, 2017:C2.

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

Research and Writing Guides