How to format your references using the Chemistry Central Journal citation style

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

Salamini F (2003) Plant Biology. Hormones and the green revolution. Science 302:71–72

A journal article with 2 authors

Ponce de León MS, Zollikofer CP (2001) Neanderthal cranial ontogeny and its implications for late hominid diversity. Nature 412:534–538

A journal article with 3 authors

Adkins JF, McIntyre K, Schrag DP (2002) The salinity, temperature, and delta18O of the glacial deep ocean. Science 298:1769–1773

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Xie D-Y, Sharma SB, Paiva NL, et al (2003) Role of anthocyanidin reductase, encoded by BANYULS in plant flavonoid biosynthesis. Science 299:396–399

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lindahl D (2008) Multi-Family Millions. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Safir MP, Wallach HS, Rizzo A “skip” (2015) Future Directions in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Prevention, Diagnosis, and Treatment. Springer US, Boston, MA

A chapter in an edited book

Niedergang F, Chavrier P (2005) Regulation of Phagocytosis by Rho GTPases. In: Boquet P, Lemichez E (eds) Bacterial Virulence Factors and Rho GTPases. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 43–60

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 Chemistry Central Journal.

Blog post

Fang J (2014) Clownfish Undertake Epic Journeys. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/nemo-could-have-traveled-400-kilometers-real-life-marlin-wouldnt/. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (1987) Student Aid: Financial Assistance to Scholarship Athletes. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Alderson M (2017) Procedural Justice and Police Encounters with Homeless Injecting Drug Users. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

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

Feeney K (2008) Growing More Diverse. New York Times NJ11

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	Chemistry Central Journal
Abbreviation	Chem. Cent. J.
ISSN (online)	1752-153X
Scope	General Chemistry