How to format your references using the Current Opinion in Pharmacology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Current Opinion in Pharmacology. 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	Download the output style file
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

Bromm V: Astronomy. Embers of the distant past. Science 2012, 338:1160–1161.

A journal article with 2 authors

Jucker T, Coomes DA: Comment on “Plant species richness and ecosystem multifunctionality in global drylands.” Science 2012, 337:155; author reply 155.

A journal article with 3 authors

Balazs AC, Emrick T, Russell TP: Nanoparticle polymer composites: where two small worlds meet. Science 2006, 314:1107–1110.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Bernstein MP, Dworkin JP, Sandford SA, Cooper GW, Allamandola LJ: Racemic amino acids from the ultraviolet photolysis of interstellar ice analogues. Nature 2002, 416:401–403.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Franco P: Understanding Bitcoin. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2014.

An edited book

Mak P-I: High-/Mixed-Voltage Analog and RF Circuit Techniques for Nanoscale CMOS. Springer; 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

Torney F, Frame B, Wang K: Maize. In Transgenic Crops IV. Edited by Pua E-C, Davey MR. Springer; 2007:73–105.

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 Current Opinion in Pharmacology.

Blog post

Andrews R: Listen To The Sound Of Humanity’s Very First Language. IFLScience 2016,

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: Weather Forecasting: National Weather Service’s Operations Prototype Needs More Rigorous Planning. U.S. Government Printing Office; 2007.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Lama N: Optimized Veterinary Thermographic Image Classification using Support Vector Machines and Noise Mitigation. 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

(nyt) SK: World Briefing | Europe: Russia: Summer Camp For Budding Thieves. New York Times 2004,

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	Current Opinion in Pharmacology
Abbreviation	Curr. Opin. Pharmacol.
ISSN (print)	1471-4892
ISSN (online)	1471-4973
Scope	Drug Discovery Pharmacology

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