How to format your references using the Data in Brief citation style

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

[1]

K. Powell, Back to basics: from industry to academia, Nature. 430 (2004) 706–707.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

M. Goedert, M.G. Spillantini, A century of Alzheimer’s disease, Science. 314 (2006) 777–781.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

L. Cheng, W. Hong, Z.-C. Hao, Generation of electromagnetic waves with arbitrary orbital angular momentum modes, Sci. Rep. 4 (2014) 4814.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

C.C. Chang, A.N. Nicholson, E. Rinaldi, E. Berkowitz, N. Garron, D.A. Brantley, H. Monge-Camacho, C.J. Monahan, C. Bouchard, M.A. Clark, B. Joó, T. Kurth, K. Orginos, P. Vranas, A. Walker-Loud, A per-cent-level determination of the nucleon axial coupling from quantum chromodynamics, Nature. 558 (2018) 91–94.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

R. Pandya, Mobile and Personal Communication Services and Systems, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2005.

An edited book

[1]

R.G. Panizzon, M.H. Seegenschmiedt, eds., Radiation Treatment and Radiation Reactions in Dermatology, 2nd ed. 2015, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

D. Helbing, M. Treiber, A. Kesting, M. Schönhof, Theoretical vs. Empirical Classification and Prediction of Congested Traffic States, in: A. Bressan, D. Helbing, A. Klar, E. Zuazua (Eds.), Modelling and Optimisation of Flows on Networks: Cetraro, Italy 2009, Editors: Benedetto Piccoli, Michel Rascle, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2013: pp. 303–333.

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 in Brief.

Blog post

[1]

J. O`Callaghan, Celestial Fireworks due in 2018 When a Pulsar Passes Through the Atmosphere of a Giant Star, IFLScience. (2015). https://www.iflscience.com/space/celestial-fireworks-due-2018-when-pulsar-passes-through-atmosphere-giant-star/ (accessed October 30, 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

[1]

Government Accountability Office, DOD Participation in the Space Transportation System: Status and Issues, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1981.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

N.A. Walker, Mothers’ description of raising two children with an autism spectrum disorder: A case study, Doctoral dissertation, Capella University, 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

[1]

J. Koblin, Emmys Seek Ratings Winner, New York Times. (2016) C1.

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 in Brief
Abbreviation	Data Brief
ISSN (print)	2352-3409
Scope	Multidisciplinary

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