How to format your references using the Languages citation style

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

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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.
McSwain, M.V. Astrophysics: Black Hole Found Orbiting a Fast Rotator. Nature 2014, 505, 296–297.
A journal article with 2 authors
1.
Hewitt, S.C.; Korach, K.S. Cell Biology. A Hand to Support the Implantation Window. Science 2011, 331, 863–864.
A journal article with 3 authors
1.
Schuler, B.; Lipman, E.A.; Eaton, W.A. Probing the Free-Energy Surface for Protein Folding with Single-Molecule Fluorescence Spectroscopy. Nature 2002, 419, 743–747.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
1.
Xu, J.; Bjursell, M.K.; Himrod, J.; Deng, S.; Carmichael, L.K.; Chiang, H.C.; Hooper, L.V.; Gordon, J.I. A Genomic View of the Human-Bacteroides Thetaiotaomicron Symbiosis. Science 2003, 299, 2074–2076.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
1.
Abraham, A. The Trend Following Bible; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ, 2012; ISBN 9781118611715.
An edited book
1.
Exploring the Security Landscape: Non-Traditional Security Challenges; Masys, A.J., Ed.; Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications; 1st ed. 2016.; Springer International Publishing: Cham, 2016; ISBN 9783319279138.
A chapter in an edited book
1.
Chang, B.Y.P.; Ajjan, R. A Complicated Case of Thyroid Eye Disease. In Endocrinology and Diabetes: Case Studies, Questions and Commentaries; Ajjan, R., Orme, S.M., Eds.; Springer: London, 2015; pp. 31–36 ISBN 9781447127888.

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 Languages.

Blog post
1.
Carpineti, A. Avalanche Victim Suffers From Sudoku-Induced Seizures Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/sudoku-induced-seizures-avalanche-victim/ (accessed on 30 October 2018).

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 FTS 2000 Recompetition: Opportunity Exists for Better Prices; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1991;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
1.
LaVertu, D.J. An Exploratory Approach to In-Trinity® for Fall Prevention. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach: Long Beach, CA, 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.
Van Gelder, S.K.C. by L. Arts, Briefly; Russia: Happy Birthday, Maya. New York Times 2005, E2.

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 titleLanguages
ISSN (online)2226-471X
Scope

Other styles