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

Mills E (2005) Environment. The specter of fuel-based lighting. Science 308:1263–1264

A journal article with 2 authors

Wentz FJ, Schabel M (2000) Precise climate monitoring using complementary satellite data sets. Nature 403:414–416

A journal article with 3 authors

De Marco García NV, Karayannis T, Fishell G (2011) Neuronal activity is required for the development of specific cortical interneuron subtypes. Nature 472:351–355

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Bhargava V, Head SR, Ordoukhanian P, et al (2014) Technical variations in low-input RNA-seq methodologies. Sci Rep 4:3678

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Fabozzi FJ, Drake PP (2009) Finance. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Scaglione M (2008) Imaging nelle urgenze vascolari — Body: Casi clinici. Springer, Milano

A chapter in an edited book

Pedreschi D, Bonchi F, Turini F, et al (2008) Privacy Protection: Regulations and Technologies, Opportunities and Threats. In: Giannotti F, Pedreschi D (eds) Mobility, Data Mining and Privacy: Geographic Knowledge Discovery. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 101–119

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

O`Callaghan J (2016) Watch Live As A Spacecraft Leaves The ISS Today With A “Fire Experiment” On Board. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/watch-live-as-a-spacecraft-leaves-the-iss-today-with-a-fire-experiment-on-board/. 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 (2016) DOT Discretionary Grants: Problems with Hurricane Sandy Transit Grant Selection Process Highlight the Need for Additional Accountability. 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

Pokhrel P (2010) Towards improved identification of spatially-distributed rainfall runoff models. Doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona

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

Slotnik DE (2017) Bobby Taylor, Who Encouraged Jackson 5. New York Times B11

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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