How to format your references using the Positivity citation style

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

Stocker, R.: Marine microbes see a sea of gradients. Science. 338, 628–633 (2012)

A journal article with 2 authors

Chang, J.B., Ferrell, J.E., Jr: Mitotic trigger waves and the spatial coordination of the Xenopus cell cycle. Nature. 500, 603–607 (2013)

A journal article with 3 authors

Robertson, W.H., Diken, E.G., Johnson, M.A.: Chemistry. Snapshots of water at work. Science. 301, 320–321 (2003)

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Fennell, T., Deen, P.P., Wildes, A.R., Schmalzl, K., Prabhakaran, D., Boothroyd, A.T., Aldus, R.J., McMorrow, D.F., Bramwell, S.T.: Magnetic Coulomb phase in the spin ice Ho2Ti2O7. Science. 326, 415–417 (2009)

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Stoop, I., Billiet, J., Koch, A., Fitzgerald, R.: Improving Survey Response. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK (2010)

An edited book

Pfeiffer, F. ed: Mechanical System Dynamics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg (2008)

A chapter in an edited book

Rogova, G.L.: Information Quality in Information Fusion and Decision Making with Applications to Crisis Management. In: Rogova, G. and Scott, P. (eds.) Fusion Methodologies in Crisis Management: Higher Level Fusion and Decision Making. pp. 65–86. Springer International Publishing, Cham (2016)

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 Positivity.

Blog post

Fang, J.: Enormous Ocean Discovered On Jupiter’s Moon, https://www.iflscience.com/space/theres-vast-ocean-underneath-icy-crust-jupiters-biggest-moon/

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: Evaluation and the Research Process. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC (1979)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Slotnick, A.: Status symbols in triathlete culture, (2012)

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

(nyt), S.K.: World Briefing | Europe: Belarus: New Law Restricts Religions, (2002)

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	Positivity
Abbreviation	Positivity
ISSN (print)	1385-1292
ISSN (online)	1572-9281
Scope	General Mathematics Analysis Theoretical Computer Science