How to format your references using the Current Science citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Current 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	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

Snow, R. W., The invisible victims. Nature, 2004, 430, 934–935.

A journal article with 2 authors

Calais, E. and Stein, S., Time-variable deformation in the New Madrid seismic zone. Science, 2009, 323, 1442.

A journal article with 3 authors

Carslaw, K. S., Harrison, R. G., and Kirkby, J., Cosmic rays, clouds, and climate. Science, 2002, 298, 1732–1737.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Choi, E.-S., Nam, J.-S., Jung, J.-Y., Cho, N.-P., and Cho, S.-D., Modulation of specificity protein 1 by mithramycin A as a novel therapeutic strategy for cervical cancer. Sci. Rep., 2014, 4, 7162.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Le Menn, M., Instrumentation and Metrology in Oceanography John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2012.

An edited book

Zerr, B., Jaulin, L., Creuze, V., et al. (eds.), Quantitative Monitoring of the Underwater Environment: Results of the International Marine Science and Technology Event MOQESM´14 in Brest, France Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Agrifoglio, R., Schiavone, F., and Metallo, C., Investigating the Sailing Ship Effect as Newcomers’ Strategic Reaction to Technological Change. In Empowering Organizations: Enabling Platforms and Artefacts (eds. Torre, T., Braccini, A. M., and Spinelli, R.), Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2016, pp. 39–49.

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 Science.

Blog post

Davis, J., World’s Oldest Water Discovered 3 Kilometers Underground. IFLScience, IFLScience, 2016, December 15.

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, Energy Research: Opportunities Exist to Recover Federal Investment in Technology Development Projects U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1996.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Cashion, A. T., Exploring Dielectric Absorption: Data Collection System Development. Doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, 2010.

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

Walsh, M. W., A Harbinger of U.S. Woes. New York Times, 2016, May 10, p. B1.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

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 Science
Abbreviation	Curr. Sci.
ISSN (print)	0011-3891
Scope	Multidisciplinary