How to format your references using the Forensic Chemistry citation style

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

[1]

L. Schulz, Psychology. Infants explore the unexpected, Science 348 (2015) 42–43.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

J.D.R. Reimann, P.K. Jackson, Emi1 is required for cytostatic factor arrest in vertebrate eggs, Nature 416 (2002) 850–854.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

S. Naeem, J.E. Duffy, E. Zavaleta, The functions of biological diversity in an age of extinction, Science 336 (2012) 1401–1406.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

N. Narayanaswamy, M. Kumar, S. Das, R. Sharma, P.K. Samanta, S.K. Pati, S.K. Dhar, T.K. Kundu, T. Govindaraju, A thiazole coumarin (TC) turn-on fluorescence probe for AT-base pair detection and multipurpose applications in different biological systems, Sci. Rep. 4 (2014) 6476.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

D. Malcolm, The British and Irish Short Story Handbook, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2012.

An edited book

[1]

M. Claypool, S. Uhlig, eds., Passive and Active Network Measurement: 9th International Conference, PAM 2008, Cleveland, OH, USA, April 29-30, 2008. Proceedings, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

A.J. Fuligni, Social Identity, Motivation, andWell Being Among Adolescents from Asian and Latin American Backgrounds, in: G. Carlo, L.J. Crockett, M.A. Carranza (Eds.), Health Disparities in Youth and Families: Research and Applications, Springer, New York, NY, 2011: pp. 97–120.

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 Forensic Chemistry.

Blog post

[1]

J. Fang, Smoking While Pregnant Could Alter Baby’s DNA, IFLScience (2014). https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/smoking-while-pregnant-could-alter-babys-dna/ (accessed October 30, 2018).

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, Information Technology Management: Social Security Administration Practices Can Be Improved, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2001.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

G.F. Calhoun, Limit theory for overfit models, Doctoral dissertation, University of California San Diego, 2009.

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]

G. Vecsey, Appetite for Racing, And for Winning, New York Times (2011) D4.

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	Forensic Chemistry
Abbreviation	Forensic Chem.
ISSN (print)	2468-1709
Scope	Analytical Chemistry Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Spectroscopy Materials Chemistry Pathology and Forensic Medicine Law