How to format your references using the Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy citation style

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

[1]

N. Barnes, Publish your computer code: it is good enough, Nature 467 (2010) 753.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

M. Balasubramanian, E.L. Schwartz, The isomap algorithm and topological stability, Science 295 (2002) 7.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

P. Kareiva, A. Chang, M. Marvier, Environmental economics. Development and conservation goals in World Bank projects, Science 321 (2008) 1638–1639.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

T. Sakaba, A. Stein, R. Jahn, E. Neher, Distinct kinetic changes in neurotransmitter release after SNARE protein cleavage, Science 309 (2005) 491–494.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

T.H. Cahill, Low Impact Development and Sustainable Stormwater Management, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2012.

An edited book

[1]

N. Lee, ed., Digital Da Vinci: Computers in the Arts and Sciences, Springer, New York, NY, 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

J. Xie, Research on Complex Networks Evolution Model, in: D. Jin, S. Lin (Eds.), Advances in Computer Science and Information Engineering: Volume 1, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2012: pp. 29–33.

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 Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy.

Blog post

[1]

R. Andrews, Earth Is Now Warmer Than It’s Been In 120,000 Years, IFLScience (2016).

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, Mobile Devices: Federal Agencies’ Steps to Improve Mobile Access to Government Information and Services, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2014.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

D.A. Newfang, A Historical Assessment of Asbestos Exposure, Abatement Methods and Containment Efficacy During Asbestos Containing Material Removal Activities at a Large Federal Facility, Doctoral dissertation, University of South Florida, 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]

J. Barron, Celebrating a Honey Harvest in the Center of Hudson Yards, New York Times (2017) A17.

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	Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy
Abbreviation	J. Mol. Spectrosc.
ISSN (print)	0022-2852
Scope	Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Spectroscopy Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics