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

Pennisi, E. (2000). GENOMICS: Rat Genome Off to an Early Start. Science (New York, N.Y.), 289(5483), 1267b–1269b.

A journal article with 2 authors

Harris, S. E., & Bellino, M. (2013). IBI* series winner. DNA barcoding from NYC to Belize. Science (New York, N.Y.), 342(6165), 1462–1463.

A journal article with 3 authors

Chisari, F. V., Mason, W. S., & Seeger, C. (2014). Virology. Comment on “Specific and nonhepatotoxic degradation of nuclear hepatitis B virus cccDNA.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 344(6189), 1237.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Stratford, K., Adhikari, R., Pagonabarraga, I., Desplat, J.-C., & Cates, M. E. (2005). Colloidal jamming at interfaces: a route to fluid-bicontinuous gels. Science (New York, N.Y.), 309(5744), 2198–2201.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hopkins, B. R. (2012). Starting and Managing a Nonprofit Organization. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Maio, M. de, & Rzany, B. (Eds.). (2007). Botulinum Toxin in Aesthetic Medicine. Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Lee, Y. S., Malek, F., Cheng, E. M., Liu, W. W., Wee, F. H., Iqbal, M. N., Zahid, L., Abdullah, F., Abdullah, A. Z., Noorpi, N. S., Mokhtar, N. M., & Jusoh, M. A. (2015). Composites Based on Rice Husk Ash/Polyester for Use as Microwave Absorber. In H. A. Sulaiman, M. A. Othman, M. Z. A. Abd. Aziz, & M. F. Abd Malek (Eds.), Theory and Applications of Applied Electromagnetics: APPEIC 2014 (pp. 41–48). Springer International Publishing.

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

Andrew, E. (2015, February 17). Highly Aggressive New Strain Of HIV Is Spreading Through Cuba. 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. (1995). HUD-Assisted Renters (RCED-95-167R). 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

Bernstine, J. T. (2015). Experiences of Students Transferring from Community and Technical Colleges to a Private Nonprofit University [Doctoral dissertation]. George Washington 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

Koblin, J. (2016, October 8). Pauley Is Back — Again. New York Times, B1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Pennisi, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Harris & Bellino, 2013; Pennisi, 2000).

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

Two authors: (Harris & Bellino, 2013)
Three or more authors: (Stratford et al., 2005)

About the journal

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