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

Ricci, L., 2005. History of science: Dante’s insight into galilean invariance. Nature 434, 717.

A journal article with 2 authors

Tessier, P.M., Lindquist, S., 2007. Prion recognition elements govern nucleation, strain specificity and species barriers. Nature 447, 556–561.

A journal article with 3 authors

Tripathi, S., Li, H., Poulos, T.L., 2013. Structural basis for effector control and redox partner recognition in cytochrome P450. Science 340, 1227–1230.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Vendruscolo, M., Paci, E., Dobson, C.M., Karplus, M., 2001. Three key residues form a critical contact network in a protein folding transition state. Nature 409, 641–645.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Loughran, M., 2010. Auditing for Dummies®. Wiley Publishing, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Luck, M., Padgham, L. (Eds.), 2008. Agent-Oriented Software Engineering VIII: 8th International Workshop, AOSE 2007, Honolulu, HI, USA, May 14, 2007, Revised Selected Papers, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Hannah, K.J., Ball, M.J., Edwards, M.J.A., 2006. Telecommunications and Informatics, in: Ball, M.J., Edwards, M.J.A. (Eds.), Introduction to Nursing Informatics, Health Informatics. Springer, New York, NY, pp. 41–54.

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

Hale, T., 2016. A 75-Pound Pearl Has Been Hidden Under A Fisherman’s Bed For 10 Years [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL (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, 2009. Career and Technical Education: Surveys to State Directors of Career and Technical Education (GAO-09-737SP, July 2009), an E-supplement to GAO-09-683 (No. GAO-09-737SP). 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

Primeaux, S.J., 2014. The Role of Education, Empathy, and Psychological Flexibility in Implicit and Explicit Mental Health Stigma (Doctoral dissertation). University of Louisiana, Lafayette, LA.

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

Hechinger, J., 2017. Get the Keg Out of the Frat House. New York Times A27.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Ricci, 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Ricci, 2005; Tessier and Lindquist, 2007).

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

Two authors: (Tessier and Lindquist, 2007)
Three or more authors: (Vendruscolo et al., 2001)

About the journal

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