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

Shaffer CH (2006) The charge-up man. Nature 444:652

A journal article with 2 authors

Chen MS, Goodman DW (2004) The structure of catalytically active gold on titania. Science 306:252–255

A journal article with 3 authors

Harris HH, Pickering IJ, George GN (2003) The chemical form of mercury in fish. Science 301:1203

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Mills MM, Ridame C, Davey M, et al (2004) Iron and phosphorus co-limit nitrogen fixation in the eastern tropical North Atlantic. Nature 429:292–294

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Deroussi L (2016) Metaheuristics for Logistics. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Müller-Schloer C, Karl W, Yehia S (2010) Architecture of Computing Systems - ARCS 2010: 23rd International Conference, Hannover, Germany, February 22-25, 2010. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Amerio L (2011) Almost-Periodic Equations in Hilbert Spaces. In: Amerio L (ed) Equazioni differenziali astratte. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 223–239

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

Andrew E (2014) Strangest Prehistoric Creatures To Ever Appear on Earth. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/strangest-prehistoric-creatures-ever-appear-earth/. 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 (1996) Global Positioning System Augmentations. 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

Hsu Y-C (2009) A cultural psychosocial model for depression in elder care institutions: The roles of Socially Supportive Activity and self-transcendence. Doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona

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

Hu W (2017) An Eyesore for 17 Years in Harlem. New York Times A17

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