How to format your references using the Perspectives in Science citation style

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

Baker, M., 2010. Structural biology: The gatekeepers revealed. Nature 465, 823–826.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kaiser, D., Moreno, J., 2012. Dual-use research: Self-censorship is not enough. Nature 492, 345–347.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sander, R., Crutzen, P.J., von Glasow, R., 2004. Comment on “Reactions at interfaces as a source of sulfate formation in sea-salt particles” (II). Science 303, 628; author reply 628.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Pelkmans, L., Fava, E., Grabner, H., Hannus, M., Habermann, B., Krausz, E., Zerial, M., 2005. Genome-wide analysis of human kinases in clathrin- and caveolae/raft-mediated endocytosis. Nature 436, 78–86.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Epstein, M., 2012. The Elements of Continuum Biomechanics. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Seuret, A., Özbay, H., Bonnet, C., Mounier, H. (Eds.), 2014. Low-Complexity Controllers for Time-Delay Systems, Advances in Delays and Dynamics. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

White, M.A., Stein, R.J., 2013. LESS: Ports and Instrumentation, in: Rane, A., Cadeddu, J.A., Desai, M.M., Gill, I.S. (Eds.), Scar-Less Surgery: NOTES, Transumbilical, and Others. Springer, London, pp. 37–48.

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 Perspectives in Science.

Blog post

Andrew, E., 2016. Disease Evolution: The Origins Of Anorexia And How It’s Shaped By Culture And Time [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1984. Many Proprietary Schools Do Not Comply With Department of Education’s Pell Grant Program Requirements (No. HRD-84-17). U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Kang, E.Y., 2010. Late Twentieth-Century Piano Concert Etudes: A Style Study (Doctoral dissertation). University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH.

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

Forsythe, M., Stevenson, A., 2017. Gadfly Nettles Chinese Elite From 5th Ave. New York Times A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Baker, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Baker, 2010; Kaiser and Moreno, 2012).

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

Two authors: (Kaiser and Moreno, 2012)
Three or more authors: (Pelkmans et al., 2005)

About the journal

Full journal title	Perspectives in Science
Abbreviation	Perspect. Sci. (Neth)
ISSN (print)	2213-0209
Scope