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

Klein, J. (2009). Chemistry. Repair or replacement--a joint perspective. Science (New York, N.Y.), 323(5910), 47–48.

A journal article with 2 authors

Schmeing, T. M., & Ramakrishnan, V. (2009). What recent ribosome structures have revealed about the mechanism of translation. Nature, 461(7268), 1234–1242.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hsiang, S. M., Meng, K. C., & Cane, M. A. (2011). Civil conflicts are associated with the global climate. Nature, 476(7361), 438–441.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Rothman, J. S., Cathala, L., Steuber, V., & Silver, R. A. (2009). Synaptic depression enables neuronal gain control. Nature, 457(7232), 1015–1018.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wright, J. R., & Cooper, J. E. (2014). Introduction to Aircraft Aeroelasticity and Loads. John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

An edited book

Maltoni, D. (2009). Handbook of Fingerprint Recognition (D. Maio, A. K. Jain, & S. Prabhakar, Eds.). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Levin, B. W., & Nosov, M. A. (2016). Role of the Compressibility of Water and of Nonlinear Effects in the Formation of Tsunami Waves. In M. Nosov (Ed.), Physics of Tsunamis (pp. 181–262). 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, August 10). #ILookLikeAnEngineer Shines A Welcome Light On Industry’s Diversity. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/ilooklikeanengineer-shines-welcome-light-industrys-diversity/

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. (1997). Aviation Safety: Installation of Smoke Detection and Fire Suppression Systems in U.S. Transport Aircraft (RCED-98-54R). 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

Bryan, J. D. (2009). Team development social networking and its impact on the encouragement of spiritual leadership [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

Burghardt, L. F. (2005, November 13). Stories From the Battlefield Inspire a Teacher’s World War II Novel. New York Times, 14LI10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Klein, 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Klein, 2009; Schmeing & Ramakrishnan, 2009).

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

Two authors: (Schmeing & Ramakrishnan, 2009)
Three authors: (Hsiang et al., 2011)
6 or more authors: (Rothman et al., 2009)

About the journal

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

Research and Writing Guides