How to format your references using the Data citation style

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

Gewin, V. High-Energy Career Lines. Nature 2005, 434, 936–937.

A journal article with 2 authors

Schlegel, T.; Schuster, S. Small Circuits for Large Tasks: High-Speed Decision-Making in Archerfish. Science 2008, 319, 104–106.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hosseini, P.; Wright, C.D.; Bhaskaran, H. An Optoelectronic Framework Enabled by Low-Dimensional Phase-Change Films. Nature 2014, 511, 206–211.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Lubowich, D.A.; Pasachoff, J.M.; Balonek, T.J.; Millar, T.J.; Tremonti, C.; Roberts, H.; Galloway, R.P. Deuterium in the Galactic Centre as a Result of Recent Infall of Low-Metallicity Gas. Nature 2000, 405, 1025–1027.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Graham, L. Internal Control Audit and Compliance; John Wiley & Sons, Inc: Hoboken, NJ, 2015; ISBN 9781119029540.

An edited book

Software Process Improvement: 14th European Conference, EuroSPI 2007, Potsdam, Germany, September 26-28, 2007. Proceedings; Abrahamsson, P., Baddoo, N., Margaria, T., Messnarz, R., Eds.; Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2007; Vol. 4764; ISBN 9783540747659.

A chapter in an edited book

Sousa, L.C.; Castro, C.F.; António, C.C. Blood Flow Simulation and Applications. In Technologies for Medical Sciences; Natal Jorge, R.M., Tavares, J.M.R.S., Pinotti Barbosa, M., Slade, A.P., Eds.; Lecture Notes in Computational Vision and Biomechanics; Springer Netherlands: Dordrecht, 2012; pp. 67–86 ISBN 9789400740679.

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 Data.

Blog post

Andrews, R. Physicists Forge Impossible Molecule That Chemists Failed To Make (accessed on 30 October 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 Telecommunications: Preliminary Information on Media Ownership; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 2007;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Ray-Dulany, W.R. Base Change for the Iwahori-Hecke Algebra of GL2. Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park: College Park, MD, 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

Johnston, K. Quotation of the Day. New York Times 2011, A2.

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	Data
Abbreviation	Data (Basel)
ISSN (online)	2306-5729
Scope