How to format your references using the Nursing Outlook citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Nursing Outlook. 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	Download the output style file
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

Lynch-Stieglitz, J. (2004). Ocean science. Hemispheric asynchrony of abrupt climate change. Science (New York, N.Y.), 304(5679), 1919–1920.

A journal article with 2 authors

West, S. A., & Sheldon, B. C. (2002). Constraints in the evolution of sex ratio adjustment. Science (New York, N.Y.), 295(5560), 1685–1688.

A journal article with 3 authors

Gong, Y., Mo, C., & Fraser, S. E. (2004). Planar cell polarity signalling controls cell division orientation during zebrafish gastrulation. Nature, 430(7000), 689–693.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Donelan, J. M., Li, Q., Naing, V., Hoffer, J. A., Weber, D. J., & Kuo, A. D. (2008). Biomechanical energy harvesting: generating electricity during walking with minimal user effort. Science (New York, N.Y.), 319(5864), 807–810.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Brendel, R. (2005). Thin-Film Crystalline Silicon Solar Cells. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Bhatt, D. L. (Ed.). (2012). Peripheral and Cerebrovascular Intervention. Humana Press.

A chapter in an edited book

Dhakal, S. (2015). Evolution of Geomorphologic Hazards in Hindu Kush Himalaya. In H. K. Nibanupudi & R. Shaw (Eds.), Mountain Hazards and Disaster Risk Reduction (pp. 53–72). Springer Japan.

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 Nursing Outlook.

Blog post

Fang, J. (2015, February 13). Two Surprisingly Modern Jurassic Mammals Found in China. 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. (2008). Workforce Development: Community Colleges and One-Stop Centers Collaborate to Meet 21st Century Workforce Needs (GAO-08-547). 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

Ready, C. (2014). Preventing childhood obesity in foster children: A grant proposal [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

Hamilton, J. M., & Kosar, K. R. (2016, December 12). All the President’s Propaganda. New York Times, A21.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Lynch-Stieglitz, 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Lynch-Stieglitz, 2004; West & Sheldon, 2002).

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

Two authors: (West & Sheldon, 2002)
Three authors: (Gong et al., 2004)
6 or more authors: (Donelan et al., 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	Nursing Outlook
Abbreviation	Nurs. Outlook
ISSN (print)	0029-6554
Scope	General Nursing