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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Marx, V. (2012). High-throughput anatomy: Charting the brain’s networks. Nature, 490(7419), 293–298.
A journal article with 2 authors
Subramaniam, S., & Henderson, R. (2000). Molecular mechanism of vectorial proton translocation by bacteriorhodopsin. Nature, 406(6796), 653–657.
A journal article with 3 authors
Akbarzadeh, A., Qiu, C.-W., & Danner, A. J. (2013). Exploiting design freedom in biaxial dielectrics to enable spatially overlapping optical instruments. Scientific Reports, 3, 2055.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Wang, D., Garcia-Bassets, I., Benner, C., Li, W., Su, X., Zhou, Y., Qiu, J., Liu, W., Kaikkonen, M. U., Ohgi, K. A., Glass, C. K., Rosenfeld, M. G., & Fu, X.-D. (2011). Reprogramming transcription by distinct classes of enhancers functionally defined by eRNA. Nature, 474(7351), 390–394.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Fiorenzani, S., Ravelli, S., & Edoli, E. (2012). The Handbook of Energy Trading. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An edited book
Maus, T. M., Nhieu, S., & Herway, S. T. (Eds.). (2016). Essential Echocardiography: Transesophageal Echocardiography for Non-cardiac Anesthesiologists. Springer International Publishing.
A chapter in an edited book
Levis, A. A., & Papageorgiou, L. G. (2009). Active demand management for substitute products through price optimisation. In H. Meyr & H.-O. Günther (Eds.), Supply Chain Planning: Quantitative Decision Support and Advanced Planning Solutions (pp. 1–27). 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 12). What’s The Healthiest Position To Sleep In? IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/how-do-you-sleep-night/

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. (1997). National Airspace System: Issues in Allocating Costs for Air Traffic Services to DOD and Other Users (RCED-97-106). 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
Latronica, A. N. (2016). The effect of emotion regulation on stress and the role of executive function [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
Brantley, B. (2017, January 6). Into a World of Fantasy, Where the Sorcerers Take Center Stage. New York Times, C8.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Marx, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Marx, 2012; Subramaniam & Henderson, 2000).

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

  • Two authors: (Subramaniam & Henderson, 2000)
  • Three authors: (Akbarzadeh et al., 2013)
  • 6 or more authors: (Wang et al., 2011)

About the journal

Full journal titleDecision
AbbreviationDecision (Wash., DC)
ISSN (print)2325-9965
ISSN (online)2325-9973
Scope

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