How to format your references using the PROSPECTS citation style

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

Mervis, J. (2000). CALL TO ARMS: Diversity: Easier Said Than Done. Science (New York, N.Y.), 289(5478), 378–379.

A journal article with 2 authors

Leathers, M. L., & Olson, C. R. (2012). In monkeys making value-based decisions, LIP neurons encode cue salience and not action value. Science (New York, N.Y.), 338(6103), 132–135.

A journal article with 3 authors

Zhang, P. C., Keleshian, A. M., & Sachs, F. (2001). Voltage-induced membrane movement. Nature, 413(6854), 428–432.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Sorek, R., Zhu, Y., Creevey, C. J., Francino, M. P., Bork, P., & Rubin, E. M. (2007). Genome-wide experimental determination of barriers to horizontal gene transfer. Science (New York, N.Y.), 318(5855), 1449–1452.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Brown, C. (2010). Fibonacci Analysis. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Golash, D. (Ed.). (2010). Freedom of Expression in a Diverse World (Vol. 3). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Michl, S. (2015). Inventing Traditions, Raising Expectations. Recent Debates on “Personalized Medicine.” In T. Fischer, M. Langanke, P. Marschall, & S. Michl (Eds.), Individualized Medicine: Ethical, Economical and Historical Perspectives (pp. 45–60). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

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 PROSPECTS.

Blog post

Bedell-Pearce, H. (2017, May 15). Mysterious 15 Meter Sea Creature Found In Indonesia. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/mysterious-15-meter-sea-creature-found-in-indonesia-/. 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. (1990). Overseas Allowances: Improvements Needed in Administration (No. NSIAD-90-46). 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

Hoffmann, M. (2015). An exploratory study: Mobile device use for academics (Doctoral dissertation). Pepperdine University, Malibu, 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

Vecsey, G. (2011, May 29). Success and Scandal Can Leave Everyone Weary. New York Times, p. SP7.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Mervis 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Leathers and Olson 2012; Mervis 2000).

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

Two authors: (Leathers and Olson 2012)
Three or more authors: (Sorek et al. 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	PROSPECTS
Abbreviation	Prospects (Paris)
ISSN (print)	0033-1538
ISSN (online)	1573-9090
Scope	Education