How to format your references using the National Academy Science Letters citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for National Academy Science Letters. 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

Mervis J (2006) Environmental science. Climate sensors dropped from U.S. weather satellite package. Science 312:1580

A journal article with 2 authors

Weiss BP, Tikoo SM (2014) The lunar dynamo. Science 346:1246753

A journal article with 3 authors

Ottosen S, Herrera FJ, Triezenberg SJ (2002) Transcription. Proteasome parts at gene promoters. Science 296:479–481

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Larson DR, Zipfel WR, Williams RM, et al (2003) Water-soluble quantum dots for multiphoton fluorescence imaging in vivo. Science 300:1434–1436

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ming D, Glasser D, Hildebrandt D, et al (2016) Attainable Region Theory. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Camarinha-Matos LM, Paraskakis I, Afsarmanesh H (2009) Leveraging Knowledge for Innovation in Collaborative Networks: 10th IFIP WG 5.5 Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises, PRO-VE 2009, Thessaloniki, Greece, October 7-9, 2009. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Jorge MLC, Pardo TAS (2010) Formalizing CST-Based Content Selection Operations. In: Pardo TAS, Branco A, Klautau A, et al (eds) Computational Processing of the Portuguese Language: 9th International Conference, PROPOR 2010, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil, April 27-30, 2010. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 25–29

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 National Academy Science Letters.

Blog post

Luntz S (2015) Snake Escapes After Being Eaten By A Larger Snake. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/snake-escapes-after-being-eaten-bigger-snake/. Accessed 30 Oct 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

Government Accountability Office (2001) Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: National Aeronautics and Space Administration. 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

Alzaaq AY (2017) Arabic adaptation of loanwords: An empirical examination of pharyngealization and vowel epenthesis. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

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

Schwirtz M, Winerip M (2015) Tunnels, Disguises and Sewers: A Prison’s Inmates Have Found Many Ways to Flee. New York Times A20

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 title	National Academy Science Letters
Abbreviation	Natl. Acad. Sci. Lett.
ISSN (print)	0250-541X
ISSN (online)	2250-1754
Scope	Engineering (miscellaneous)

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