How to format your references using the Collegian citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Collegian. 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
Peto, J. (2001). Cancer epidemiology in the last century and the next decade. Nature, 411(6835), 390–395.
A journal article with 2 authors
Nuth, J. A., 3rd, & Johnson, N. M. (2012). Astronomy. Complex protostellar chemistry. Science (New York, N.Y.), 336(6080), 424–425.
A journal article with 3 authors
Azuma, S., Katayama, I., & Nakakuki, T. (2014). Rheological decoupling at the Moho and implication to Venusian tectonics. Scientific Reports, 4, 4403.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Zhang, S., Kanemitsu, Y., Fujitani, M., & Yamashita, T. (2014). The newly identified migration inhibitory protein regulates the radial migration in the developing neocortex. Scientific Reports, 4, 5984.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
O’Hara, B. T., & Malisow, B. (2017). CCSP® (ISC) 2® Certified Cloud Security Professional Official Study Guide. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Sartor, G., Palmirani, M., Francesconi, E., & Biasiotti, M. A. (Eds.). (2011). Legislative XML for the Semantic Web: Principles, Models, Standards for Document Management (Vol. 4). Springer Netherlands.
A chapter in an edited book
Nordström, G., Johnsson, H., & Lidelöw, S. (2013). Using the Energy Signature Method to Estimate the Effective U-Value of Buildings. In A. Hakansson, M. Höjer, R. J. Howlett, & L. C. Jain (Eds.), Sustainability in Energy and Buildings: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference in Sustainability in Energy and Buildings (SEB´12) (pp. 35–44). Springer.

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 Collegian.

Blog post
Luntz, S. (2015, June 8). Birds Use Vortices For Elegant Flight. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/birds-use-vortices-elegant-flight/

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. (2002). Electronic Government: Selection and Implementation of the Office of Management and Budget’s 24 Initiatives (GAO-03-229). 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
Allyasin, F. (2010). Low-cost frequency-domain methods of ruby fluorescence lifetime measurements [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
O’sullivan, M. L. (2017, September 15). Trump Can Harness the Energy Boom. New York Times, A27.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Peto, 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Nuth & Johnson, 2012; Peto, 2001).

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

  • Two authors: (Nuth & Johnson, 2012)
  • Three authors: (Azuma et al., 2014)
  • 6 or more authors: (Zhang et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleCollegian
AbbreviationCollegian
ISSN (print)1322-7696
ScopeGeneral Nursing

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