How to format your references using the NRL Advances citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for NRL Advances. 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

Taylor P (2008) Personal genomes: when consent gets in the way. Nature 456:32–33

A journal article with 2 authors

Ralph TC, Boyd RW (2007) PHYSICS. Better computing with photons. Science 318:1251–1252

A journal article with 3 authors

Umemoto K, Wentzcovitch RM, Allen PB (2006) Dissociation of MgSiO3 in the cores of gas giants and terrestrial exoplanets. Science 311:983–986

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Hattori D, Chen Y, Matthews BJ, et al (2009) Robust discrimination between self and non-self neurites requires thousands of Dscam1 isoforms. Nature 461:644–648

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Chen G, Wang X, Li X (2014) Fundamentals of Complex Networks. John Wiley & Sons Singapore Pte. Ltd, Singapore

An edited book

Fiadeiro JL, Inverardi P (2008) Fundamental Approaches to Software Engineering: 11th International Conference, FASE 2008, Held as Part of the Joint European Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2008, Budapest, Hungary, March 29-April 6, 2008. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Yashin AI, Ukraintseva SV, Akushevich I, et al (2016) Evidence for Dependence Among Diseases. In: Stallard E, Land KC (eds) Biodemography of Aging: Determinants of Healthy Life Span and Longevity. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp 95–111

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 NRL Advances.

Blog post

Andrew E (2015) How We Got To Now: Why The US And Europe Went Different Ways On GMOs. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/how-we-got-now-why-us-and-europe-went-different-ways-gmos/. 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 (2005) Air Traffic Control: Preliminary Observations on Commercialized Air Navigation Service Providers. 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

King GD (2010) Public Works Directors’ Perceptions of the Effects of Stakeholders on Environmental Policies in California Cities. Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix

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 J (2016) I Make G.M.O. Food. Label It. New York Times A23

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	NRL Advances
ISSN (online)	2197-375X
Scope