How to format your references using the Metascience citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Metascience. 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Smith, O. 2001. Biomedicine. Nota bene. In the nic of time. Science (New York, N.Y.) 294: 2118.

A journal article with 2 authors

Bard, Edouard, and Rosalind E. M. Rickaby. 2009. Migration of the subtropical front as a modulator of glacial climate. Nature 460: 380–383.

A journal article with 3 authors

Shembade, Noula, Averil Ma, and Edward W. Harhaj. 2010. Inhibition of NF-kappaB signaling by A20 through disruption of ubiquitin enzyme complexes. Science (New York, N.Y.) 327: 1135–1139.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Chaudhuri, Jayanta, Ming Tian, Chan Khuong, Katrin Chua, Eric Pinaud, and Frederick W. Alt. 2003. Transcription-targeted DNA deamination by the AID antibody diversification enzyme. Nature 422: 726–730.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Minoli, Daniel. 2012. Mobile Video with Mobile IPv6. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Suárez, J. C., R. Garrido, L. A. Balona, and J. Christensen-Dalsgaard, ed. 2013. Stellar Pulsations: Impact of New Instrumentation and New Insights. Vol. 31. Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Blake, Jamilia J., Danielle M. Smith, Miner P. Marchbanks, Allison L. Seibert, Steve M. Wood, and Eun Sook Kim. 2016. Does Student–Teacher Racial/Ethnic Match Impact Black Students’ Discipline Risk? A Test of the Cultural Synchrony Hypothesis. In Inequality in School Discipline: Research and Practice to Reduce Disparities, ed. Russell J. Skiba, Kavitha Mediratta, and M. Karega Rausch, 79–98. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan US.

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 Metascience.

Blog post

Andrew, Elise. 2015. Louisiana Teachers Are Using The Bible in Science Class. IFLScience. IFLScience. June 12.

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. 2002. Homeland Security: OMB’s Temporary Cessation of Information Technology Funding for New Investments. GAO-03-186T. 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

Coyle, Maria. 2017. Pre-Service School Counselor’s Perception of Professional Identity Development During Internship. Doctoral dissertation, Washington, DC: George Washington 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

Barron, James. 2016. Donald Trump Hits the Town. New York Times, November 19.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Smith 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Smith 2001; Bard and Rickaby 2009).

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

Two authors: (Bard and Rickaby 2009)
Three or more authors: (Chaudhuri et al. 2003)

About the journal

Full journal title	Metascience
Abbreviation	Metascience
ISSN (print)	0815-0796
ISSN (online)	1467-9981
Scope	History History and Philosophy of Science General Social Sciences