How to format your references using the Chaos citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Chaos. 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.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
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
1 M. Alvarez, “A question of supply and demand,” Nature 445(7123), 124 (2007).
A journal article with 2 authors
1 S.C. Griffith, and R. Montgomerie, “Evolutionary biology: Why do birds engage in extra-pair copulation?,” Nature 422(6934), 833; discussion 833-4 (2003).
A journal article with 3 authors
1 K.E. Maskus, A.M. Mobarak, and E.T. Stuen, “Economics. Doctoral students and U.S. immigration policy,” Science 342(6158), 562–563 (2013).
A journal article with 4 or more authors
1 J.A. Clarke, C.P. Tambussi, J.I. Noriega, G.M. Erickson, and R.A. Ketcham, “Definitive fossil evidence for the extant avian radiation in the Cretaceous,” Nature 433(7023), 305–308 (2005).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
1 F. Glover, D. Klingman, and N.V. Phillips, Network Models in Optimization and Their Applications in Practice (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 1992).
An edited book
1 C.A. Vissers, Architectural Design: Conception and Specification of Interactive Systems (Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2016).
A chapter in an edited book
1 S. Gregory, in Complex Networks: Results of the 2009 International Workshop on Complex Networks (CompleNet 2009), edited by S. Fortunato, G. Mangioni, R. Menezes, and V. Nicosia (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2009), pp. 47–61.

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 Chaos.

Blog post
1 J. Fang, “Even Nicotine-Free E-Cig Vapor Damages Lung Cells,” IFLScience, (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
1 Government Accountability Office, Head Start: Comprehensive Approach to Identifying and Addressing Risks Could Help Prevent Grantee Financial Management Weakenesses (U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2005).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
1 J.D. Le Blanc, Helping African American Middle School Students Transition to High School with the New Normal Project: A Grant Proposal, Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 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
1 J. Koblin, and M.M. Grynbaum, “Fox News, in Naming Leaders, Sends Signal: ‘Stay the Course,’” New York Times, A1 (2016).

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 titleChaos
AbbreviationChaos
ISSN (print)1054-1500
ISSN (online)1089-7682
ScopeApplied Mathematics
Mathematical Physics
General Physics and Astronomy
Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

Other styles