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
De, S. (2009). Journal club. A biologist looks at the effect of a dynamic nuclear environment on gene expression. Nature, 460(7251), 15.
A journal article with 2 authors
Jesson, L. K., & Barrett, S. C. H. (2002). Solving the puzzle of mirror-image flowers. Nature, 417(6890), 707.
A journal article with 3 authors
Brunkard, J. O., Runkel, A. M., & Zambryski, P. C. (2015). Evolution. Comment on “A promiscuous intermediate underlies the evolution of LEAFY DNA binding specificity.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 347(6222), 621.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Perraki, A., DeFalco, T. A., Derbyshire, P., Avila, J., Séré, D., Sklenar, J., Qi, X., Stransfeld, L., Schwessinger, B., Kadota, Y., Macho, A. P., Jiang, S., Couto, D., Torii, K. U., Menke, F. L. H., & Zipfel, C. (2018). Author Correction: Phosphocode-dependent functional dichotomy of a common co-receptor in plant signalling. Nature.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Sharkh, S. M., Abusara, M. A., Orfanoudakis, G. I., & Hussain, B. (2014). Power Electronic Converters for Microgrids. John Wiley & Sons, Singapore Pte. Ltd.
An edited book
Samarati, P. (Ed.). (2015). Data and Applications Security and Privacy XXIX: 29th Annual IFIP WG 11.3 Working Conference, DBSec 2015, Fairfax, VA, USA, July 13-15, 2015, Proceedings (Vol. 9149). Springer International Publishing.
A chapter in an edited book
Kalmar, B., & Greensmith, L. (2008). Heat Shock Proteins as Therapeutic Targets in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. In A. A. A. Asea & I. R. Brown (Eds.), Heat Shock Proteins and the Brain: Implications for Neurodegenerative Diseases and Neuroprotection (pp. 69–107). Springer Netherlands.

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
Andrew, E. (2015, August 6). Shark Safety Tips: Sorting Out Fact From Fiction. IFLScience; 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
Government Accountability Office. (2005). National Airspace System: Transformation will Require Cultural Change, Balanced Funding Priorities, and Use of All Available Management Tools (GAO-06-154). 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
Vado, P. F. (2012). Foster Care Independence Act of 1999: A policy analysis [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
Greenhouse, L. (2006, November 4). Supreme Court to Revisit Federal Sentencing Issues. New York Times, A17.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (De, 2009).
This sentence cites two references (De, 2009; Jesson & Barrett, 2002).

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

  • Two authors: (Jesson & Barrett, 2002)
  • Three authors: (Brunkard et al., 2015)
  • 6 or more authors: (Perraki et al., 2018)

About the journal

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

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