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

Goodman S. 2005 The familial balancing act. Nature 433, 552–553.

A journal article with 2 authors

Sharma P, Allison JP. 2015 The future of immune checkpoint therapy. Science 348, 56–61.

A journal article with 3 authors

Guo D, Knight TE, McCusker JK. 2011 Angular momentum conservation in dipolar energy transfer. Science 334, 1684–1687.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Gray NS, MacCulloch MJ, Smith J, Morris M, Snowden RJ. 2003 Forensic psychology: Violence viewed by psychopathic murderers. Nature 423, 497–498.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Robertson B, Vignaux GA, Berger CEH. 2016 Interpreting Evidence. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Clover DE. 2013 The Nature of Transformation: Environmental Adult Education. Rotterdam: SensePublishers.

A chapter in an edited book

Macleod AM. 2008 Coercion, Justice, and Democracy. In Coercion and the State (eds DA Reidy, WJ Riker), pp. 63–75. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

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

Fang J. 2015 Simple Memory Test Could Offer Hints of Alzheimer’s 18 Years Before Diagnosis. IFLScience. See https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/memory-test-scores-offer-hints-alzheimers-18-years-diagnosis/ (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. 2000 Aviation Competition: Issues Related to the Proposed United Airlines-US Airways Merger.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Blair GT. 2014 The effects of a league guided sportsmanship program on the behaviors of youth sports athletes. 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

de la MERCED MJ. 2017 Tequila Maker Sold for Up to $1 Billion. New York Times, 21 June. , B7.

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