How to format your references using the Pharmacological Reviews citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Pharmacological Reviews. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Zaanen J (2014) High-temperature superconductivity: electron mirages in an iron salt. Nature 515:205–206.
A journal article with 2 authors
Gilfanov M, and Bogdán A (2010) An upper limit on the contribution of accreting white dwarfs to the type Ia supernova rate. Nature 463:924–925.
A journal article with 3 authors
Jonsson GE, Miljkovic V, and Dmitriev A (2014) Nanoplasmon-enabled macroscopic thermal management. Sci Rep 4:5111.
A journal article with 99 or more authors
Zhang C, Wang Z, Dong J, Pan R, Qiu H, Zhang J, Zhang P, Zheng J, and Yu W (2014) Bilirubin modulates acetylcholine receptors in rat superior cervical ganglionic neurons in a bidirectional manner. Sci Rep 4:7475.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Salles M (2015) Decision-Making and the Information System, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.
An edited book
Stigbrand T, Carlsson J, and Adams GP (eds) (2008) Targeted Radionuclide Tumor Therapy: Biological Aspects, Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.
A chapter in an edited book
Fuhl W, Kübler T, Sippel K, Rosenstiel W, and Kasneci E (2015) ExCuSe: Robust Pupil Detection in Real-World Scenarios, in Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns: 16th International Conference, CAIP 2015, Valletta, Malta, September 2-4, 2015 Proceedings, Part I (Azzopardi G, and Petkov N eds) pp 39–51, Springer International Publishing, Cham.

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 Pharmacological Reviews.

Blog post
Andrew E (2015) 10 +3 Simple Ways to Reduce Your Cancer Risk, 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 (1998) Air Traffic Control: Weak Computer Security Practices Jeopardize Flight Safety, 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
Ringler I (2008) Values satisfaction and participation in a community leadership program: A case study, University of Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ.

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
Itzkoff D, Bai M, Levin B, Hodgman J, Reeves H, Newton M, Sax D, Hanel M, Hanlon G, Sax D, Shortz W, Havrilesky H, Cowen T, Clinton G, Skurnick L, and Kelly J (2012) The One Page Magazine.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Zaanen, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Gilfanov and Bogdán, 2010; Zaanen, 2014).

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

  • Two authors: (Gilfanov and Bogdán, 2010)
  • Three or more authors: (Zhang et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titlePharmacological Reviews
AbbreviationPharmacol. Rev.
ISSN (print)0031-6997
ISSN (online)1521-0081
ScopeMolecular Medicine
Pharmacology

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