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

Lewis, J.: From signals to patterns: space, time, and mathematics in developmental biology. Science. 322, 399–403 (2008)

A journal article with 2 authors

Perepichka, D.F., Rosei, F.: Chemistry. Extending polymer conjugation into the second dimension. Science. 323, 216–217 (2009)

A journal article with 3 authors

Sun, A., Lauher, J.W., Goroff, N.S.: Preparation of poly(diiododiacetylene), an ordered conjugated polymer of carbon and iodine. Science. 312, 1030–1034 (2006)

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Zhang, S., Yu, M., Deng, H., Shen, G., Wei, Y.: Polyclonal rabbit anti-human ovarian cancer globulins inhibit tumor growth through apoptosis involving the caspase signaling. Sci. Rep. 4, 4984 (2014)

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Anderson, D.: TKO Management! John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ (2007)

An edited book

Hakansson, A., Hartung, R. eds: Agent and Multi-Agent Systems in Distributed Systems - Digital Economy and E-Commerce. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg (2013)

A chapter in an edited book

Lyubina, J.: Magnetocaloric Materials. In: Zhukov, A. (ed.) Novel Functional Magnetic Materials: Fundamentals and Applications. pp. 115–186. 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

Taub, B.: Ireland Wants To Legalize Supervised Heroin Use

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: Further Improvement Needed in the Management of Magnetic Tapes by Goddard Space Flight Center. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC (1970)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Jansson, A.: Stratigraphy, Landscape Evolution, and Past Environments at the Billy Big Spring Site, Montana, (2017)

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, M.W.: Creditors of Stockton Fight City Over Pension Funding While in Bankruptcy, (2012)

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