How to format your references using the Colloid and Polymer Science citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Colloid and Polymer Science. 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

Wang Q (2013) Nuclear safety lies in greater transparency. Nature 494:403

A journal article with 2 authors

Reddy GV, Meyerowitz EM (2005) Stem-cell homeostasis and growth dynamics can be uncoupled in the Arabidopsis shoot apex. Science 310:663–667

A journal article with 3 authors

De Pontieu B, Erdélyi R, James SP (2004) Solar chromospheric spicules from the leakage of photospheric oscillations and flows. Nature 430:536–539

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Vyas N, Walvekar A, Tate D, et al (2014) Vertebrate Hedgehog is secreted on two types of extracellular vesicles with different signaling properties. Sci Rep 4:7357

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Baldwin D, Birkett J, Facey O, Rabey G (2013) The Forensic Examination and Interpretation of Tool Marks. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Pino RE, Kott A, Shevenell M (2014) Cybersecurity Systems for Human Cognition Augmentation. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Mohamad KM, Herawan T, Deris MM (2010) Hiding Data in JPEG Using in-DQT Technique. In: Bandyopadhyay SK, Adi W, Kim T-H, Xiao Y (eds) Information Security and Assurance: 4th International Conference, ISA 2010, Miyazaki, Japan, June 23-25, 2010. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 27–36

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 Colloid and Polymer Science.

Blog post

Fang J (2015) Life’s Building Blocks May Have Arisen Simultaneously. In: IFLScience. 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 (1999) Reported Year 2000 (Y2K) Readiness Status of 25 Large School Districts. 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

Steiner CP (2015) Three essays in applied microeconomics. Doctoral dissertation, University of California San Diego

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

Saslow L (2007) Board Renewing Searches By Trained Dogs at School. New York Times 14LI2

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	Colloid and Polymer Science
Abbreviation	Colloid Polym. Sci.
ISSN (print)	0303-402X
ISSN (online)	1435-1536
Scope	Colloid and Surface Chemistry Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Materials Chemistry Polymers and Plastics