How to format your references using the Carbon citation style

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

[1]

H. Gintis, Behavior. Punishment and cooperation, Science 319 (2008) 1345–1346.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

I. Valiela, S.E. Fox, Ecology. Managing coastal wetlands, Science 319 (2008) 290–291.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

J. Paar, B.P. Oldroyd, G. Kastberger, Giant honeybees return to their nest sites, Nature 406 (2000) 475.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

H.L. Tan, S. Kupershmidt, R. Zhang, S. Stepanovic, D.M. Roden, A.A.M. Wilde, M.E. Anderson, J.R. Balser, A calcium sensor in the sodium channel modulates cardiac excitability, Nature 415 (2002) 442–447.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

J.-M. Torres-Moreno, Automatic Text Summarization, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2014.

An edited book

[1]

S. Knaster, Learn Objective-C on the Mac: For iOS and OS X, Apress, Berkeley, CA, 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

B. Su, Q. Xu, P. Xiao, Finding the Anti-block Vital Edge of a Shortest Path Between Two Nodes, in: A. Dress, Y. Xu, B. Zhu (Eds.), Combinatorial Optimization and Applications: First International Conference, COCOA 2007, Xi’an, China, August 14-16, 2007. Proceedings, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2007: pp. 11–19.

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 Carbon.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, How The Energy Grid Handles The Surge After A Solar Eclipse, IFLScience (2015). https://www.iflscience.com/technology/how-energy-grid-handles-surge-after-solar-eclipse/ (accessed October 30, 2018).

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

[1]

Government Accountability Office, Maritime Environment: Federal and State Actions, Expenditures, and Challenges to Addressing Abandoned and Derelict Vessels, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2017.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Y. Sanchez, Effectiveness of parent-child interaction therapy for Latino families: A secondary analysis of existing data, Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 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

[1]

G. Vecsey, One More From The Heart, New York Times (2011) D1.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

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	Carbon
Abbreviation	Carbon N. Y.
ISSN (print)	0008-6223
Scope	General Chemistry