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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI). 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

Kiehl J. Climate change. Lessons from Earth’s past. Science. 2011;331(6014):158-159.

A journal article with 2 authors

Walker AW, Parkhill J. Microbiology. Fighting obesity with bacteria. Science. 2013;341(6150):1069-1070.

A journal article with 3 authors

Padture NP, Gell M, Jordan EH. Thermal barrier coatings for gas-turbine engine applications. Science. 2002;296(5566):280-284.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Bennett MR, Pang WL, Ostroff NA, et al. Metabolic gene regulation in a dynamically changing environment. Nature. 2008;454(7208):1119-1122.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Tang C. The Data Industry: The Business and Economics of Information and Big Data. John Wiley & Sons, Inc; 2016.

An edited book

Islam S. Social Justice in the Globalization of Production: Labor, Gender, and the Environment Nexus. (Hossain I, ed.). Palgrave Macmillan UK; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

Kurtis M, Logishetty K, Martinez-Martin P. An in-Depth Look at the Non Motor Symptom Scale. In: Martinez-Martin P, Odin P, Antonini A, eds. Handbook of Non-Motor Symptoms in Parkinson’s Disease. Springer Healthcare UK; 2011:37-43.

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 the National Cancer Institute.

Blog post

Fang J. Researchers Have Sequenced Giraffe and Okapi Genomes For The First Time. IFLScience. May 18, 2016. Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/researchers-have-sequenced-giraffe-and-okapi-genomes-first-time/

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. Aviation Security: Challenges Exist in Stabilizing and Enhancing Passenger and Baggage Screening Operations. U.S. Government Printing Office; 2004.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Mazgaeen L. Differential RNAi Approaches to Enhance Knockdown Efficiency of Target Gene Transcripts in the Highly DDT-Resistant 91-R Strain of Drosophila Melanogaster. Doctoral dissertation. Southern Illinois University; 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

McKINLEY JC Jr. 30 Are Charged in Scam To Avoid Parking Tickets. New York Times. October 3, 2017:A22.

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	Journal of the National Cancer Institute
Abbreviation	J. Natl. Cancer Inst.
ISSN (print)	0027-8874
ISSN (online)	1460-2105
Scope	Cancer Research Oncology