How to format your references using the Fertility and Sterility citation style

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

Waldrop MM. Physics meets cancer: The disruptor. Nature 2011;474(7349):20–2.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kaeberlein M, Kapahi P. Cell signaling. Aging is RSKy business. Science 2009;326(5949):55–6.

A journal article with 3 authors

Karnath H-O, Borchers S, Himmelbach M. Comment on “Movement intention after parietal cortex stimulation in humans.” Science 2010;327(5970):1200; author reply 1200.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Chen Z, Mao L, Liu C, Blake JR, Zheng D. Decreased peripheral arterial volume distensibility in patients with branch retinal vein occlusion in comparison with normal subjects. Sci Rep 2014;4:6685.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Williams DL. Ophthalmology of Exotic Pets. West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.; 2012.

An edited book

Zajda J, Daun H, editors. Global Values Education: Teaching Democracy and Peace. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2009.

A chapter in an edited book

Kamran S, Jazayeri M. Dynamic Content and User Identification in Social Semantic Tagging Systems. In: Luo Y, editor. Cooperative Design, Visualization, and Engineering: 12th International Conference, CDVE 2015, Mallorca, Spain, September 20-23, 2015. Proceedings. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015. p. 36–47.

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 Fertility and Sterility.

Blog post

Davis J. Study Suggests That Some Forms Of Autism May Not Just Affect The Brain [Internet]. IFLScience. 2016 [cited 2018 Oct 30];Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/study-suggests-that-some-forms-of-autism-may-not-just-affect-the-brain/

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. Information Technology: Management and Oversight of Projects Totaling Billions of Dollars Need Attention. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2009.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Rensing RI. Developing a notebook protocol for the high school chemistry classroom. 2012;

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

Feeney K. Cupcakes a Chicken Can Love. New York Times. 2007;NJ12.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

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	Fertility and Sterility
Abbreviation	Fertil. Steril.
ISSN (print)	0015-0282
ISSN (online)	1556-5653
Scope	Obstetrics and Gynaecology Reproductive Medicine