How to format your references using the China Communications citation style

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

[1]

C. Marshall, “Comment on ‘Abrupt and gradual extinction among Late Permian land vertebrates in the Karoo basin, South Africa,’” Science, vol. 308, no. 5727, pp. 1413; author reply 1413, Jun. 2005.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

S. Lamb and P. Davis, “Cenozoic climate change as a possible cause for the rise of the Andes,” Nature, vol. 425, no. 6960, pp. 792–797, Oct. 2003.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

V. C. Bennett, A. D. Brandon, and A. P. Nutman, “Coupled 142Nd-143Nd isotopic evidence for Hadean mantle dynamics,” Science, vol. 318, no. 5858, pp. 1907–1910, Dec. 2007.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

F. Spoor, S. Bajpai, S. T. Hussain, K. Kumar, and J. G. M. Thewissen, “Vestibular evidence for the evolution of aquatic behaviour in early cetaceans,” Nature, vol. 417, no. 6885, pp. 163–166, May 2002.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

K. L. Ketring and M. B. Glaze, Atlas of Feline Ophthalmology. West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 2012.

An edited book

[1]

A. Verger et al., Eds., Campaigning for “Education for All”: Histories, Strategies and Outcomes of Transnational Advocacy Coalitions in Education. Rotterdam: SensePublishers, 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

J. Billingsley, “Instances and Contexts of the Head Motif in Britain,” in Physical Evidence for Ritual Acts, Sorcery and Witchcraft in Christian Britain: A Feeling for Magic, R. Hutton, Ed., London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2016, pp. 68–90.

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 China Communications.

Blog post

[1]

T. Hale, “Watch The First Ever Video Of The World’s Most Elusive Whale,” IFLScience.

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, “Transportation Security: TSA Could Strengthen Monitoring of Allegations of Employee Misconduct,” U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, GAO-13-624, Jul. 2013.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

L. J. Jones, “From Corbin and Hillman to Dionysos: The Partial Unveiling of Psyche’s Stage,” Doctoral dissertation, Pacifica Graduate Institute, Carpinteria, CA, 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]

L. Greenhouse, “Student Debt Collectible by Social Security,” New York Times, p. A28, Dec. 08, 2005.

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], [2], [3], [4].

About the journal

Full journal title	China Communications
Abbreviation	China Commun.
ISSN (print)	1673-5447
Scope