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

Lorenz, R. (2003). Planetary science. The glitter of distant seas. Science (New York, N.Y.), 302(5644), 403–404.

A journal article with 2 authors

Allison, E. H., & Bassett, H. R. (2015). Climate change in the oceans: Human impacts and responses. Science (New York, N.Y.), 350(6262), 778–782.

A journal article with 3 authors

Choudhury, S., Morgan, D., & Uberuaga, B. P. (2014). Massive interfacial reconstruction at misfit dislocations in metal/oxide interfaces. Scientific Reports, 4, 6533.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Min, W., Lu, S., Chong, S., Roy, R., Holtom, G. R., & Xie, X. S. (2009). Imaging chromophores with undetectable fluorescence by stimulated emission microscopy. Nature, 461(7267), 1105–1109.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kim, H.-G., Moreau, N., & Sikora, T. (2006). MPEG-7 Audio and Beyond. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Thomas, A. R., & Vaduva, S. (Eds.). (2015). Global Supply Chain Security: Emerging Topics in Research, Practice and Policy. Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Steiner, A. (2012). Agroforestry and the Transition to the Future. In P. K. R. Nair & D. Garrity (Eds.), Agroforestry - The Future of Global Land Use (pp. 17–20). 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. (2015, May 27). Shell Can’t Afford To Wait Until 2050 To Adapt Its Business To Climate Change. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/shell-can-t-afford-wait-until-2050-adapt-its-business-climate-change/

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. (2007). No Child Left Behind Act: Education Actions May Help Improve Implementation and Evaluation of Supplemental Educational Services (GAO-07-738T). 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

Bailey, S. M. (2008). Content Assessment in Intelligent Computer-Aided Language Learning: Meaning Error Diagnosis for English as a Second Language [Doctoral dissertation]. Ohio State University.

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

Kelly, T. (2006, April 23). Performing Miracles, With Wrench and Rivet. New York Times, 144.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Lorenz, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Allison & Bassett, 2015; Lorenz, 2003).

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

Two authors: (Allison & Bassett, 2015)
Three authors: (Choudhury et al., 2014)
6 or more authors: (Min et al., 2009)

About the journal

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

Research and Writing Guides