How to format your references using the iScience citation style

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

Ravishankara, A.R., 2012. Atmospheric science. Water vapor in the lower stratosphere. Science 337, 809–810.

A journal article with 2 authors

Valbuzzi, A., Yanofsky, C., 2001. Inhibition of the B. subtilis regulatory protein TRAP by the TRAP-inhibitory protein, AT. Science 293, 2057–2059.

A journal article with 3 authors

Montrose, K., Yang, Y., Krissansen, G.W., 2014. The tetrapeptide core of the carrier peptide Xentry is cell-penetrating: novel activatable forms of Xentry. Sci. Rep. 4, 4900.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Lu, T.-P., Chen, K.T., Tsai, M.-H., Kuo, K.-T., Hsiao, C.K., Lai, L.-C., Chuang, E.Y., 2014. Identification of genes with consistent methylation levels across different human tissues. Sci. Rep. 4, 4351.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Weiss, A., 2009. Getting Started in Consulting. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Burger, J. (Ed.), 2011. Stakeholders and Scientists: Achieving Implementable Solutions to Energy and Environmental Issues. Springer, New York, NY.

A chapter in an edited book

Sparano, A., Barbato, G., 2010. Aorta toracica e tronchi sovraortici, in: Romano, L., Fulciniti, S., Silva, M. (Eds.), Anatomia TC Multidetettore — Body. Springer, Milano, pp. 23–27.

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 iScience.

Blog post

Fang, J., 2014. Sturdy 3D Material Behaves Like Graphene [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/technology/sturdy-3d-material-behaves-graphene/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 2005. Taxpayer Information: Options Exist to Enable Data Sharing Between IRS and USCIS but Each Presents Challenges (No. GAO-06-100). U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Jujhavarapu, S., 2017. Real Time Driver Drowsiness Detection (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Wagner, J., 2017. Mets’ Plan to Deal With Injuries: Don’t Talk About Them So Much. New York Times B9.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Ravishankara, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Ravishankara, 2012; Valbuzzi and Yanofsky, 2001).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Valbuzzi and Yanofsky, 2001)
Three or more authors: (Lu et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	iScience
ISSN (print)	2589-0042
Scope