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

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

Zieminska D. High-energy physics: Proton smasher spots rare particle decays. Nature 2015;522:42–3.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Golde TE, Kukar TL. Medicine. Avoiding unintended toxicity. Science 2009;324:603–4.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Ammon CJ, Kanamori H, Lay T. A great earthquake doublet and seismic stress transfer cycle in the central Kuril islands. Nature 2008;451:561–5.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Charras GT, Yarrow JC, Horton MA, Mahadevan L, Mitchison TJ. Non-equilibration of hydrostatic pressure in blebbing cells. Nature 2005;435:365–9.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Schwedt G. Chemie und Literatur - ein ungewöhnlicher Flirt. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA; 2009.

An edited book

[1]

Dong G. Sequence Data Mining. vol. 33. Boston, MA: Springer US; 2007.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Li X, Mao Y. Graphs with Given Generalized Connectivity. In: Mao Y, editor. Generalized Connectivity of Graphs, Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016, p. 59–66.

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 Nursing Sciences.

Blog post

[1]

Fang J. Here’s How Scarce Wild Prey Must Be Before Big Cats Kill Livestock. 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. From School to Work. 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

[1]

Bui L. Mind Over Matter Telepsychiatry. Doctoral dissertation. 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]

Vecsey G. Sports Take Him Away; Smells Bring Him Home. New York Times 2010:SP9.

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	International Journal of Nursing Sciences
Abbreviation	Int. J. Nurs. Sci.
ISSN (print)	2352-0132
Scope	General Nursing

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