How to format your references using the International Journal of Cancer citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for International Journal of Cancer. 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

Clark PU. Climate change. Ice sheets in transition. Science 2012;337:656–8.

A journal article with 2 authors

Vaquero-Sedas MI, Vega-Palas MA. Determination of Arabidopsis thaliana telomere length by PCR. Sci Rep 2014;4:5540.

A journal article with 3 authors

Arlettaz R, Jones G, Racey PA. Effect of acoustic clutter on prey detection by bats. Nature 2001;414:742–5.

A journal article with 13 or more authors

Xu H-X, Wang G-M, Tao Z, Cui TJ. High-directivity emissions with flexible beam numbers and beam directions using gradient-refractive-index fractal metamaterial. Sci Rep 2014;4:5744.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Center for Chemical Process Safety. Guidelines for Determining the Probability of Ignition of a Released Flammable Mass. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2014.

An edited book

Löffelhardt W, ed. Endosymbiosis. Vienna: Springer, 2014. XI, 330 p. 43 illus., 32 illus. in colorp

A chapter in an edited book

Marickar YMF. Epidemiology of Stone Disease in Kerala, South India. In: Talati JJ, Tiselius H-G, Albala DM, Ye Z, eds. Urolithiasis: Basic Science and Clinical Practice. London: Springer, 2012. 47–51.

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 International Journal of Cancer.

Blog post

Taub B. The Peanut Genes That Cause Allergy In Humans Have Been Identified [Internet]. IFLScience2016 [cited 2018 Oct 30];Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/peanut-genes-cause-allergy-humans-identified/

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. Automated Patent System: Information on PTO’s Program to Automate Patent Information and Processes. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1992.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Malkus N. Beneath the district averages: Intradistrict differences in teacher compensation expenditures. 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

Murphy MJO. A Game That Turned Nixon Into a Factoid. New York Times2010;WK2.

In-text citations

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

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	International Journal of Cancer
Abbreviation	Int. J. Cancer
ISSN (print)	0020-7136
ISSN (online)	1097-0215
Scope	Cancer Research Oncology