How to format your references using the Implementation Science citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Implementation Science. 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. Zubairy MS. Physics. Factoring numbers with waves. Science. 2007;316:554–5.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Garcia CM, Ramirez E. Evidence that sensory traps can evolve into honest signals. Nature. 2005;434:501–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Junker JP, Ziegler F, Rief M. Ligand-dependent equilibrium fluctuations of single calmodulin molecules. Science. 2009;323:633–7.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Kohn A, Kovács A, Fan R, McIntyre GJ, Ward RCC, Goff JP. The antiferromagnetic structures of IrMn3 and their influence on exchange-bias. Sci Rep. 2013;3:2412.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. McCrary SA. Mastering Corporate Finance Essentials. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2010.

An edited book

1. Basten T, Hamberg R, Reckers F, Verriet J, editors. Model-Based Design of Adaptive Embedded Systems. New York, NY: Springer; 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Härdle WK, Simar L. Theory of the Multinormal. In: Simar L, editor. Applied Multivariate Statistical Analysis. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2015. p. 183–99.

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 Implementation Science.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Could measles cure cancer? Uh, not exactly…. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2014.

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. Automated Information Systems Security in Federal Civil Agencies. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1985 Oct. Report No.: 128301.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Monterosa VM. Digital Citizenship District-Wide: Examining the Organizational Evolution of an Initiative [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. Cooper M. Watching Neo-Nazis in Virginia, From Germany. New York Times. 2017 Aug 16;C1.

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	Implementation Science
Abbreviation	Implement. Sci.
ISSN (online)	1748-5908
Scope	General Medicine Health Informatics Health Policy Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health