How to format your references using the Prevention Science citation style

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

Franklin, A. D. (2013). Electronics: the road to carbon nanotube transistors. Nature, 498(7455), 443–444.

A journal article with 2 authors

Lau, W., & Sattely, E. S. (2015). Six enzymes from mayapple that complete the biosynthetic pathway to the etoposide aglycone. Science (New York, N.Y.), 349(6253), 1224–1228.

A journal article with 3 authors

Irigoien, X., Huisman, J., & Harris, R. P. (2004). Global biodiversity patterns of marine phytoplankton and zooplankton. Nature, 429(6994), 863–867.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Saikin, S. K., Khin, Y., Huh, J., Hannout, M., Wang, Y., Zare, F., et al. (2014). Chromatic acclimation and population dynamics of green sulfur bacteria grown with spectrally tailored light. Scientific reports, 4, 5057.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Cayuela Valencia, R. (2013). The Future of the Chemical Industry by 2050. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Alexis, A. F., & Barbosa, V. H. (Eds.). (2013). Skin of Color: A Practical Guide to Dermatologic Diagnosis and Treatment. New York, NY: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Ebara, M., Kotsuchibashi, Y., Uto, K., Aoyagi, T., Kim, Y.-J., Narain, R., et al. (2014). Smart Nanofibers. In Y. Kotsuchibashi, R. Narain, N. Idota, Y.-J. Kim, J. M. Hoffman, K. Uto, & T. Aoyagi (Eds.), Smart Biomaterials (pp. 189–235). Tokyo: Springer Japan.

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 Prevention Science.

Blog post

Davis, J. (2016, June 1). Researchers Create DNA “Tape Recorder” To Track Individual Cell’s Development. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/researchers-create-dna-tape-recorder-track-cells-development/. Accessed 30 October 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. (1998). Social Security Administration: Subcommittee Questions Concerning Information Technology Challenges Facing the Commissioner (No. AIMD-98-235R). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Zhang, Y. (2017). A Grant Proposal for Mindfulness-Based Self-Care Training for Child Welfare Workers (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Wasik, J. F. (2016, November 23). Mold-Busting Financial Start-Ups Led by Industry Veterans. New York Times, p. B3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Franklin 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Franklin 2013; Lau and Sattely 2015).

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

Two authors: (Lau and Sattely 2015)
Three or more authors: (Saikin et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Prevention Science
Abbreviation	Prev. Sci.
ISSN (print)	1389-4986
ISSN (online)	1573-6695
Scope	Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health