How to format your references using the Molecular Astrophysics citation style

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

Rose, S., 2009. Darwin 200: Should scientists study race and IQ? NO: Science and society do not benefit. Nature 457, 786–788.

A journal article with 2 authors

Minton, D.A., Malhotra, R., 2009. A record of planet migration in the main asteroid belt. Nature 457, 1109–1111.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hong, W., Mosca, T.J., Luo, L., 2012. Teneurins instruct synaptic partner matching in an olfactory map. Nature 484, 201–207.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Fridman, E., Carrari, F., Liu, Y.-S., Fernie, A.R., Zamir, D., 2004. Zooming in on a quantitative trait for tomato yield using interspecific introgressions. Science 305, 1786–1789.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Omura, G., Benton, B.C., 2017. Mastering AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana.

An edited book

Wagner, A., 2007. Interpretation, Law and the Construction of Meaning: Collected Papers on Legal Interpretation in Theory, Adjudication and Political Practice. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.

A chapter in an edited book

Shahid, A., Wilkinson, K., Marcu, S., Shapiro, C.M., 2012. Apnea Knowledge Test, in: Shahid, A., Wilkinson, K., Marcu, S., Shapiro, C.M. (Eds.), STOP, THAT and One Hundred Other Sleep Scales. Springer, New York, NY, pp. 49–51.

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 Molecular Astrophysics.

Blog post

Hamilton, K., 2016. Scientists Levitate Large Sphere Using Ultrasound [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/physics/scientists-levitate-large-sphere-using-ultrasound/ (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, 1990. Drug Abuse: Research on Treatment May Not Address Current Needs (No. HRD-90-114). 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

Cuvar, K.M., 2015. Balanced and collaborative outsourcing of IT services: A qualitative Delphi study of enterprise partnerships (Doctoral dissertation). University of Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ.

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

Leland, J., 2016. Starring in Someone Else’s Film. New York Times MB4.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Rose, 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Minton and Malhotra, 2009; Rose, 2009).

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

Two authors: (Minton and Malhotra, 2009)
Three or more authors: (Fridman et al., 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	Molecular Astrophysics
ISSN (print)	2405-6758
Scope