How to format your references using the Proceedings of the Royal Society A citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Proceedings of the Royal Society A. 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

Cohen MR. 2012 Eppendorf winner. When attention wanders. Science 338, 58–59.

A journal article with 2 authors

Pearce TM, Moran DW. 2012 Strategy-dependent encoding of planned arm movements in the dorsal premotor cortex. Science 337, 984–988.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kurin-Csörgei K, Epstein IR, Orbán M. 2005 Systematic design of chemical oscillators using complexation and precipitation equilibria. Nature 433, 139–142.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Gago S, Elena SF, Flores R, Sanjuán R. 2009 Extremely high mutation rate of a hammerhead viroid. Science 323, 1308.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bonnini S, Corain L, Marozzi M, Salmaso L. 2014 Nonparametric Hypothesis Testing: Rank and Permutation Methods with Applications in R. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Lucchese M, Scopinaro N, editors. 2015 Minimally Invasive Bariatric and Metabolic Surgery: Principles and Technical Aspects. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Kumpulainen K, Lankinen T. 2012 Striving for Educational Equity and Excellence. In Miracle of Education: The Principles and Practices of Teaching and Learning in Finnish Schools (eds H Niemi, A Toom, A Kallioniemi), pp. 69–81. Rotterdam: SensePublishers.

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 Proceedings of the Royal Society A.

Blog post

Andrew E. 2015 What the Dog-Fish and Camel-Bird can tell us about how our brains work. IFLScience. See https://www.iflscience.com/technology/what-dog-fish-and-camel-bird-can-tell-us-about-how-our-brains-work/ (accessed on 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. 1985 School District Officials Face Problems in Dealing With Asbestos in Their Schools.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Peterson NR. 2015 Subspecies composition, genetic variation and structure of Largemouth Bass in Puerto Rico reservoirs. Doctoral dissertation, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS.

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

Greenhouse L. 2006 Antitrust Policy Ambiguity To Be on Justices’ Docket. New York Times, 8 December. , C3.

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	Proceedings of the Royal Society A
Abbreviation	Proc. Math. Phys. Eng. Sci.
ISSN (print)	1364-5021
ISSN (online)	1471-2946
Scope	General Engineering General Mathematics General Physics and Astronomy