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

Bardeen, C. (2001). Electron transfer. Sometimes you can go home again. Science (New York, N.Y.), 293(5529), 444–445.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kinbara, K., & Aida, T. (2006). Chemistry. From electron pump to proton channel. Science (New York, N.Y.), 313(5783), 51–52.

A journal article with 3 authors

Cuello, L. G., Cortes, D. M., & Perozo, E. (2004). Molecular architecture of the KvAP voltage-dependent K+ channel in a lipid bilayer. Science (New York, N.Y.), 306(5695), 491–495.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Mikkola, H. K. A., Klintman, J., Yang, H., Hock, H., Schlaeger, T. M., Fujiwara, Y., & Orkin, S. H. (2003). Haematopoietic stem cells retain long-term repopulating activity and multipotency in the absence of stem-cell leukaemia SCL/tal-1 gene. Nature, 421(6922), 547–551.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Toptygin, I. N. (2015). Electromagnetic Phenomena in Matter. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Pardoux, E. (2014). Stochastic Differential Equations, Backward SDEs, Partial Differential Equations (A. Rӑşcanu, Ed.; Vol. 69). Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Vick, A., Vydyanathan, A., Safi, T., & Gritsenko, K. (2015). Perioperative Considerations in Pharmacology. In A. D. Kaye, A. M. Kaye, & R. D. Urman (Eds.), Essentials of Pharmacology for Anesthesia, Pain Medicine, and Critical Care (pp. 87–99). 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, July 26). Robot Hitchhiker Will Make Its Way Across The U.S. This Summer. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/robot-hitchhiker-will-make-its-way-across-united-states-summer/

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. (1980). Spending Grant Funds More Efficiently Could Save Millions (PSAD-80-58). 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

Rosenfeld, E. G. (2009). The ascent of women to senior leadership positions in the financial services industry: A phenomenological study [Doctoral dissertation]. Capella University.

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

Gordon, M. R., & Schmitt, E. (2017, September 1). Showdown Expected in the Euphrates Valley, but It’s Complicated. New York Times, A6.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bardeen, 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Bardeen, 2001; Kinbara & Aida, 2006).

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

Two authors: (Kinbara & Aida, 2006)
Three authors: (Cuello et al., 2004)
6 or more authors: (Mikkola et al., 2003)

About the journal

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

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