How to format your references using the Publications citation style

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

Arrigo, K.R. Marine Microorganisms and Global Nutrient Cycles. Nature 2005, 437, 349–355.

A journal article with 2 authors

Eldar, A.; Elowitz, M.B. Functional Roles for Noise in Genetic Circuits. Nature 2010, 467, 167–173.

A journal article with 3 authors

Cohen, M.; Shavit, R.; Zalevsky, Z. Observing Optical Plasmons on a Single Nanometer Scale. Sci. Rep. 2014, 4, 4096.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Fiegna, F.; Yu, Y.-T.N.; Kadam, S.V.; Velicer, G.J. Evolution of an Obligate Social Cheater to a Superior Cooperator. Nature 2006, 441, 310–314.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ccps Guidelines for Combustible Dust Hazard Analysis; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ, 2017; ISBN 9781119378204.

An edited book

The Ancient Nasca World: New Insights from Science and Archaeology; Lasaponara, R., Masini, N., Orefici, G., Eds.; Springer International Publishing: Cham, 2016; ISBN 9783319470504.

A chapter in an edited book

Biswas, A.; Banerjee, B.; Mandal, S. Optimal Sample Proportion for a Two-Treatment Clinical Trial in the Presence of Surrogate Endpoints. In mODa 10 – Advances in Model-Oriented Design and Analysis: Proceedings of the 10th International Workshop in Model-Oriented Design and Analysis Held in Łagów Lubuski, Poland, June 10–14, 2013; Ucinski, D., Atkinson, A.C., Patan, M., Eds.; Contributions to Statistics; Springer International Publishing: Heidelberg, 2013; pp. 27–34 ISBN 9783319002170.

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 Publications.

Blog post

Luntz, S. Earth’s Gravity Gives The Moon A Massage (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 Leo Herbert, GAO, 1956-1974; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1988;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Bilbrey, J. The Positive Effects Extrinsic Motivation Can Have on Intrinsic Motivation in a Math Classroom. Doctoral dissertation, Northcentral University: Scottsdale, AZ, 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

Isherwood, C. The Best Religion? A Believer Answers. New York Times 2016, 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	Publications
ISSN (online)	2304-6775
Scope