How to format your references using the Decision citation style

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

Colglazier, W. (2015). SUSTAINABILITY. Sustainable development agenda: 2030. Science (New York, N.Y.), 349(6252), 1048–1050.

A journal article with 2 authors

Dunn, R. A., & Martinez, F. (2011). Contrasting crustal production and rapid mantle transitions beneath back-arc ridges. Nature, 469(7329), 198–202.

A journal article with 3 authors

Bomfleur, B., McLoughlin, S., & Vajda, V. (2014). Fossilized nuclei and chromosomes reveal 180 million years of genomic stasis in royal ferns. Science (New York, N.Y.), 343(6177), 1376–1377.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Farhan, A., Gulati, J., Groβe-Wilde, E., Vogel, H., Hansson, B. S., & Knaden, M. (2013). The CCHamide 1 receptor modulates sensory perception and olfactory behavior in starved Drosophila. Scientific Reports, 3, 2765.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Cicek, V. (2013). Cathodic Protection. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Grosjean, H. (Ed.). (2005). Fine-Tuning of RNA Functions by Modification and Editing (Vol. 12). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Lefort, V., Knibbe, C., Beslon, G., & Favrel, J. (2006). Simultaneous Optimization of Weights and Structure of an RBF Neural Network. In E.-G. Talbi, P. Liardet, P. Collet, E. Lutton, & M. Schoenauer (Eds.), Artificial Evolution: 7th International Conference, Evolution Artificielle, EA 2005, Lille, France, October 26-28, 2005, Revised Selected Papers (pp. 49–60). Springer.

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 Decision.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015, June 3). Why Do Wet Dogs Stink So Much? IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/why-do-wet-dogs-stink/

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. (2006). Internet Infrastructure: Challenges in Developing a Public/Private Recovery Plan (GAO-06-863T). U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Gallegos, C. M. (2009). Shelter services for homeless older adults: A grant writing project [Doctoral dissertation]. California State University, Long Beach.

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

Greenhouse, L. (2006, January 24). Court Opens Campaign Law to Challenges. New York Times, A16.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Colglazier, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Colglazier, 2015; Dunn & Martinez, 2011).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Dunn & Martinez, 2011)
Three authors: (Bomfleur et al., 2014)
6 or more authors: (Farhan et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Decision
Abbreviation	Decision (Wash., DC)
ISSN (print)	2325-9965
ISSN (online)	2325-9973
Scope