How to format your references using the Pituitary citation style

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

Jasanoff S (2010) Science and society. Testing time for climate science. Science 328:695–696

A journal article with 2 authors

Hirsh AE, Fraser HB (2001) Protein dispensability and rate of evolution. Nature 411:1046–1049

A journal article with 3 authors

Meek SA, Conrad H, Meijer G (2009) Trapping molecules on a chip. Science 324:1699–1702

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Nakamura D, Gunjishima I, Yamaguchi S, et al (2004) Ultrahigh-quality silicon carbide single crystals. Nature 430:1009–1012

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sahinoglu M (2016) Cyber-Risk Informatics. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Mirkin CA, Meade TJ, Petrosko SH, Stegh AH (2015) Nanotechnology-Based Precision Tools for the Detection and Treatment of Cancer. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Rovira Más F, Zhang Q, Hansen AC (2011) Local Perception Systems. In: Zhang Q, Hansen AC (eds) Mechatronics and Intelligent Systems for Off-road Vehicles. Springer, London, pp 75–110

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 Pituitary.

Blog post

Andrews R (2016) This Extremely Rare Disease Keeps You Awake For The Rest Of Your Life. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/extremely-rare-disease-keeps-you-awake-rest-your-life/. Accessed 30 Oct 2018

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 (1973) Protest Against NASA Contract for Janitorial Services. 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

Jackson M (2013) Creating community in a dual immersion program: A grant writing project. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

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

Walsh MW (2015) Puerto Rico Fails to Pay $58 Million Bond Debt. New York Times B1

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

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	Pituitary
Abbreviation	Pituitary
ISSN (print)	1386-341X
ISSN (online)	1573-7403
Scope	Endocrinology Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism