How to format your references using the Nigerian Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Nigerian Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences. 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

Greene, M. T. (2000). High achiever. Nature, 407(6807), 947.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gourlay, C. M., & Dahle, A. K. (2007). Dilatant shear bands in solidifying metals. Nature, 445(7123), 70–73.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ryu, W. S., Berry, R. M., & Berg, H. C. (2000). Torque-generating units of the flagellar motor of Escherichia coli have a high duty ratio. Nature, 403(6768), 444–447.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Houde, M., Bertholet, S., Gagnon, E., Brunet, S., Goyette, G., Laplante, A., Princiotta, M. F., Thibault, P., Sacks, D., & Desjardins, M. (2003). Phagosomes are competent organelles for antigen cross-presentation. Nature, 425(6956), 402–406.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bragg, S. M. (2011). The New CEO Corporate Leadership Manual. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Bourg, E. L., & Rattan, S. I. S. (Eds.). (2008). Mild Stress and Healthy Aging: Applying Hormesis in Aging Research and Interventions. Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Hu, M., Wu, Z.-Q., & Liu, Y. (2009). The fish fauna of mountain streams in the Guanshan National Nature Reserve, Jiangxi, China. In D. L. G. Noakes, A. Romero, Y. Zhao, & Y. Zhou (Eds.), Chinese Fishes (pp. 23–27). Springer Netherlands.

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 Nigerian Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2013, October 2). Forces of Evolution. IFLScience; IFLScience.

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. (1991). Aviation Noise: Costs of Phasing Out Noisy Aircraft (RCED-91-128). 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

Davidson, W. B. (2010). High school athletics and the “whole adolescent”: A case study of three urban high schools [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

Cooper, M., & Pogrebin, R. (2017, August 27). Concern Over Gala As Trumps Bow Out. New York Times, C1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Greene, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Gourlay & Dahle, 2007; Greene, 2000).

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

Two authors: (Gourlay & Dahle, 2007)
Three or more authors: (Houde et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal title	Nigerian Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences
ISSN (print)	0189-322X
Scope