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
Taylor, P. L. (2007) Rules of engagement. Nature, 450(7167), 163–164.
A journal article with 2 authors
Hench, L. L. and Polak, J. M. (2002) Third-generation biomedical materials. Science (New York, N.Y.), 295(5557), 1014–1017.
A journal article with 3 authors
Shams, L., Kamitani, Y., and Shimojo, S. (2000) Illusions. What you see is what you hear. Nature, 408(6814), 788.
A journal article with 6 or more authors
Tape, C., Liu, Q., Maggi, A., and Tromp, J. (2009) Adjoint tomography of the southern California crust. Science (New York, N.Y.), 325(5943), 988–992.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Ishiyama, J. T. (2011) Comparative Politics (Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell).
An edited book
Hancock, E. R., Martin, R. R., and Sabin, M. A. (eds.) (2009) Mathematics of Surfaces XIII: 13th IMA International Conference York, UK, September 7-9, 2009 Proceedings (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer).
A chapter in an edited book
Schneider, K. (2006) Rationale as a By-Product, in:, A. H. Dutoit, R. McCall, I. Mistrík, and B. Paech (eds.), Rationale Management in Software Engineering (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), pp. 91–109.

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
Hamilton, K. (2016) [online] What The Bourne Films Get Right And Wrong About Amnesia. IFLScience, IFLScience. Available online at: https://www.iflscience.com/brain/what-the-bourne-films-get-right-and-wrong-about-amnesia/ (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 (1980) U.S. International Energy Research and Development Program Management (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
Mueller, C. (2012) A Multidimensional Perspective of Faculty Mentoring and Job Satisfaction during the First Year of Teaching at Lindenwood University. Doctoral dissertation, Lindenwood 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
Johnson, G. (2015, 28 July) ‘Cheaters’ Give Rise to Cancer. New York Times, D4.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Taylor, 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Taylor, 2007; Hench & Polak, 2002).

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

  • Two authors: (Hench & Polak, 2002)
  • Three authors: (Shams, Kamitani, & Shimojo, 2000)
  • 4 or more authors: (Tape, Liu, Maggi, & Tromp, 2009)

About the journal

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

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