How to format your references using the Centaurus citation style

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

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Howard, A. (2014) Building the bionic woman. Science (New York, N.Y.), 346(6206), 274.
A journal article with 2 authors
Selosse, M.-A. and Rousset, F. (2011) Evolution. The plant-fungal marketplace. Science (New York, N.Y.), 333(6044), 828–829.
A journal article with 3 authors
Okuda, S., Freinkman, E., and Kahne, D. (2012) Cytoplasmic ATP hydrolysis powers transport of lipopolysaccharide across the periplasm in E. coli. Science (New York, N.Y.), 338(6111), 1214–1217.
A journal article with 6 or more authors
Hungate, B. A., Dukes, J. S., Shaw, M. R., Luo, Y., and Field, C. B. (2003) Atmospheric science. Nitrogen and climate change. Science (New York, N.Y.), 302(5650), 1512–1513.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Simon, L. (2013) Control of Biological and Drug-Delivery Systems for Chemical, Biomedical, and Pharmaceutical Engineering (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.).
An edited book
Budd, A. (2009) CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions Second Edition. S. Collison and C. Moll (eds.) (Berkeley, CA: Apress).
A chapter in an edited book
Flint, D. J., Signori, P., and Golicic, S. L. (2016) Innovation and Experimentation, in:, P. Signori and S. L. Golicic (eds.), Contemporary Wine Marketing and Supply Chain Management: A Global Perspective (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan US), pp. 63–81.

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 Centaurus.

Blog post
Luntz, S. (2016) [online] The Pacific Plate’s Kinky Birth. IFLScience, IFLScience. Available online at: https://www.iflscience.com/physics/the-pacific-plates-kinky-birth/ (accessed 30 October 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
Government Accountability Office (2005) Transfer Students: Postsecondary Institutions Could Promote More Consistent Consideration of Coursework by Not Basing Determinations on Accreditation (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
Rankinen, W. A. (2014) The Sociophonetic and Acoustic Vowel Dynamics of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula English. Doctoral dissertation, Indiana University.

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
Kanter, J. (2016, 27 December) As Hopes for European Unity Dim, New E.U. Headquarters Are Glowing. New York Times, A6.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Howard, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Howard, 2014; Selosse & Rousset, 2011).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

  • Two authors: (Selosse & Rousset, 2011)
  • Three authors: (Okuda, Freinkman, & Kahne, 2012)
  • 4 or more authors: (Hungate, Dukes, Shaw, Luo, et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal titleCentaurus
AbbreviationCentaurus
ISSN (print)0008-8994
ISSN (online)1600-0498
ScopeHistory and Philosophy of Science

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