How to format your references using the NursingPlus Open citation style

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

Macilwain, C. (2000). Inadequate optics “threat to US laser facility.” Nature, 403(6766), 120.

A journal article with 2 authors

Schrag, D. P., & Linsley, B. K. (2002). Paleoclimate. Corals, chemistry, and climate. Science (New York, N.Y.), 296(5566), 277–278.

A journal article with 3 authors

Achlioptas, D., Naor, A., & Peres, Y. (2005). Rigorous location of phase transitions in hard optimization problems. Nature, 435(7043), 759–764.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Wisotzki, L., Bacon, R., Brinchmann, J., Cantalupo, S., Richter, P., Schaye, J., Schmidt, K. B., Urrutia, T., Weilbacher, P. M., Akhlaghi, M., Bouché, N., Contini, T., Guiderdoni, B., Herenz, E. C., Inami, H., Kerutt, J., Leclercq, F., Marino, R. A., Maseda, M., … Wendt, M. (2018). Author Correction: Nearly all the sky is covered by Lyman-α emission around high-redshift galaxies. Nature.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kazemi, G. A., Lehr, J. H., & Perrochet, P. (2006). Groundwater Age. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Simos, T. E. (Ed.). (2011). Recent Advances in Computational and Applied Mathematics. Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Hoque, M. E., Yeasin, M., & Louwerse, M. M. (2006). Robust Recognition of Emotion from Speech. In J. Gratch, M. Young, R. Aylett, D. Ballin, & P. Olivier (Eds.), Intelligent Virtual Agents: 6th International Conference, IVA 2006, Marina Del Rey, CA, USA, August 21-23, 2006. Proceedings (pp. 42–53). Springer.

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 NursingPlus Open.

Blog post

Taub, B. (2016, June 20). Global Drug Survey Reveals It’s The “Worst Time In A Generation To Take MDMA.” IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/global-drug-survey-reveals-its-the-worst-time-in-a-generation-to-take-mdma/

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. (1999). Year 2000 Computing Challenge: Readiness Improving Yet Essential Actions Remain to Ensure Delivery of Critical Services (T-AIMD-99-268). 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

Polderman, M. C. (2006). Textile Factories and Subsistence Plots: Rural Women’s Livelihoods and Unique Transition Experiences in Bulgaria [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

Vecsey, G. (2014, January 7). Jerry Coleman, 89, Yankee Infielder, Fighter Pilot and Voice of the Padres. New York Times, A15.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Macilwain, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Macilwain, 2000; Schrag & Linsley, 2002).

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

Two authors: (Schrag & Linsley, 2002)
Three authors: (Achlioptas et al., 2005)
6 or more authors: (Wisotzki et al., 2018)

About the journal

Full journal title	NursingPlus Open
Abbreviation	NursingPlus Open
ISSN (print)	2352-9008
Scope