How to format your references using the Drugs citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Drugs. 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	Download the output style file
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. Wolstenholme AJ. Evolution. Surviving in a toxic world. Science. 2012;335:545–6.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Mulligan SJ, MacVicar BA. Calcium transients in astrocyte endfeet cause cerebrovascular constrictions. Nature. 2004;431:195–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Bascom-Slack CA, Arnold AE, Strobel SA. IBI series winner. Student-directed discovery of the plant microbiome and its products. Science. 2012;338:485–6.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Joint I, Tait K, Callow ME, Callow JA, Milton D, Williams P, et al. Cell-to-cell communication across the prokaryote-eukaryote boundary. Science. 2002;298:1207.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Eynon J. The Design Manager’s Handbook. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell; 2013.

An edited book

1. Maltz MD, Rice SK, editors. Envisioning Criminology: Researchers on Research as a Process of Discovery. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Taylor IJ, Harrison AB. Distributed Security Techniques. In: Taylor IJ, Harrison AB, editors. From P2P and Grids to Services on the Web: Evolving Distributed Communities. London: Springer; 2009. p. 61–77.

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 Drugs.

Blog post

1. Carpineti A. Charon Helps Pluto Keep Its Atmosphere [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2017 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/space/charon-helps-pluto-keep-its-atmosphere/

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. Special Education: Congressional Action Needed to Improve Chapter 1 Handicapped Program. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1989 May. Report No.: HRD-89-54.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Desgens-Martin V. High prevalence of carcinoma in California sea lions Zalophus californianus: Evidence of a xenobiotic-induced carcinogenic cascade? [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2014.

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. Crow K. A Glimpse of Vaudeville In a Renovated Movie House. New York Times. 2002 Jan 6;144.

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	Drugs
Abbreviation	Drugs
ISSN (print)	0012-6667
ISSN (online)	1179-1950
Scope	Pharmacology (medical)