How to format your references using the Oncology Letters citation style

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

Allen KA: Geochemistry: When carbon escaped from the sea. Nature 518: 176–177, 2015.

A journal article with 2 authors

Geddis AE and Kaushansky K: Immunology. The root of platelet production. Science 317: 1689–1691, 2007.

A journal article with 3 authors

Usami Y, Wu Y and Göttlinger HG: SERINC3 and SERINC5 restrict HIV-1 infectivity and are counteracted by Nef. Nature 526: 218–223, 2015.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Hoeijmakers HJ, Ehrenreich D, Heng K, et al.: Atomic iron and titanium in the atmosphere of the exoplanet KELT-9b. Nature 560: 453–455, 2018.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ribéreau-Gayon P, Dubourdieu D, Donèche B and Lonvaud A: Handbook of Enology. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2006.

An edited book

Uzochukwu GA, Schimmel K, Kabadi V, Chang S-Y, Pinder T and Ibrahim SA: Proceedings of the 2013 National Conference on Advances in Environmental Science and Technology. Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Wang H, Zhao B, Vrcek I, Johnston JM and He Y-G: Role of Malondialdehyde in the Age-Related Macular Degeneration. In: Studies on Retinal and Choroidal Disorders. Stratton RD, Hauswirth WW and Gardner TW (eds.) Humana Press, Totowa, NJ, pp85–93, 2012.

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 Oncology Letters.

Blog post

Fang J: The Closest Hypervelocity Star Ever Seen. IFLScience, 2014.

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: Education and Care: Head Start Key Among Array of Early Childhood Programs, but National Research on Effectiveness Not Completed. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2003.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Waldner BW: Determining Relationships Between Technology Acceptance and Employee Attitudes Toward Automated Workflows in the Oil Industry., 2013.

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

Crow K: . . . And the Upper West Side Loses Its Plain-Vanilla Grocery. New York Times: 1410, 2001.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

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	Oncology Letters
Abbreviation	Oncol. Lett.
ISSN (print)	1792-1074
ISSN (online)	1792-1082
Scope	Cancer Research Oncology