How to format your references using the Practical Radiation Oncology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Practical Radiation Oncology. 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	Download the output style file
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

Clarke T. Infection risk puts the brakes on Canada’s biomedical research. Nature. 2003;422(6933):652.

A journal article with 2 authors

Koentges G, Matsuoka T. Evolution. Jaws of the fates. Science. 2002;298(5592):371-373.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sakamaki T, Suzuki A, Ohtani E. Stability of hydrous melt at the base of the Earth’s upper mantle. Nature. 2006;439(7073):192-194.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Westerling AL, Hidalgo HG, Cayan DR, Swetnam TW. Warming and earlier spring increase western U.S. forest wildfire activity. Science. 2006;313(5789):940-943.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Raju KSN. Fluid Mechanics, Heat Transfer, and Mass Transfer. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2011.

An edited book

Karasavvoglou A, Ongan S, Polychronidou P, eds. EU Crisis and the Role of the Periphery. Springer International Publishing; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

Li X, Lu SG, Qian X, Lin M, Zhang QM. Electrocaloric Polymers. In: Correia T, Zhang Q, eds. Electrocaloric Materials: New Generation of Coolers. Engineering Materials. Springer; 2014:107-124.

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 Practical Radiation Oncology.

Blog post

Luntz S. The Science Of Why This Dress Looks Different Colors To Different People. 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. Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s Oversight of National Public Radio. U.S. Government Printing Office; 1984.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Roberts M. Use of Stay Interviews as a Retention Tool for Key Talent. Doctoral dissertation. Pepperdine University; 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

Kolomatsky M. July’s Most Popular Listings. New York Times. August 4, 2017:RE2.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

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	Practical Radiation Oncology
Abbreviation	Pract. Radiat. Oncol.
ISSN (print)	1879-8500
Scope	Oncology Radiology Nuclear Medicine and imaging