How to format your references using the IOP SciNotes citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for IOP SciNotes. 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]

Ottino J M 2003 Is a picture worth 1,000 words? Nature 421 474–6

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Pruszynski J A and Diedrichsen J 2015 Neuroscience. Reading the mind to move the body Science 348 860–1

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Asaadi N, Ribe N M and Sobouti F 2011 Inferring nonlinear mantle rheology from the shape of the Hawaiian swell Nature 473 501–4

A journal article with 99 or more authors

[1]

Fountain A G, Jacobel R W, Schlichting R and Jansson P 2005 Fractures as the main pathways of water flow in temperate glaciers Nature 433 618–21

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Chakrabarty P 2012 A Guide to Academia (Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell)

An edited book

[1]

Baier C and Hermanns H 2006 CONCUR 2006 – Concurrency Theory: 17th International Conference, CONCUR 2006, Bonn, Germany, August 27-30, 2006. Proceedings vol 4137 (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer)

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Chor J, Dyer A and Harwood B 2011 Access to Family Planning and Induced Abortion Reducing Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Reproductive and Perinatal Outcomes: The Evidence from Population-Based Interventions ed A Handler, J Kennelly and N Peacock (Boston, MA: Springer US) pp 39–63

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 IOP SciNotes.

Blog post

[1]

Andrew D 2017 Why Losing A Dog Can Be Harder Than Losing A Relative Or Friend IFLScience

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 2006 NASA’s Deep Space Network: Current Management Structure Is Not Conducive to Effectively Matching Resources with Future Requirements (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Catalini M 2012 Intrinsic rewards increase job performance within an organization Doctoral dissertation (Malibu, CA: Pepperdine University)

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]

de la MERCED M J 2017 A Flat First Day For Blue Apron New York Times B4

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	IOP SciNotes
ISSN (online)	2633-1357
Scope