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. Grindlay JE. Astronomy. A neutron star in F-sharp. Science. 2006;311:1876–7.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Abramov O, Mojzsis SJ. Microbial habitability of the Hadean Earth during the late heavy bombardment. Nature. 2009;459:419–22.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Reinfelder JR, Kraepiel AM, Morel FM. Unicellular C4 photosynthesis in a marine diatom. Nature. 2000;407:996–9.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Brumm A, Aziz F, van den Bergh GD, Morwood MJ, Moore MW, Kurniawan I, et al. Early stone technology on Flores and its implications for Homo floresiensis. Nature. 2006;441:624–8.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Ratzliff A, Unutzer J, Katon W, Stephens KA. Integrated Care. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc; 2015.

An edited book

1. Eddie Ng YK. Compressor Instability with Integral Methods. Liu N, editor. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2007.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Poma L. L’informazione e le reti sociali complesse. In: Laszlo E, Biava PM, editors. Il senso ritrovato. Milano: Springer; 2013. p. 89–99.

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. Fang J. 500-Million-Year-Old Brains Hint at How Animal Heads Have Evolved. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015.

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. Transportation Security: Actions Needed to Address Limitations in TSA’s Transportation Worker Security Threat Assessments and Growing Workload. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2011 Dec. Report No.: GAO-12-60.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Caltrider CS. Critical Pedagogy Unit of Ceramics Instruction: Fostering Civic Engagement in California High School Students [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2017.

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. Kanter J. As Hopes for European Unity Dim, New E.U. Headquarters Are Glowing. New York Times. 2016 Dec 27;A6.

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)