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

Sarmiento, E.E. Comment on the Paleobiology and Classification of Ardipithecus Ramidus. Science 2010, 328, 1105; author reply 1105.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gompel, N.; Carroll, S.B. Genetic Mechanisms and Constraints Governing the Evolution of Correlated Traits in Drosophilid Flies. Nature 2003, 424, 931–935.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kavanagh, K.D.; Evans, A.R.; Jernvall, J. Predicting Evolutionary Patterns of Mammalian Teeth from Development. Nature 2007, 449, 427–432.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Sur, B.; Rogge, R.B.; Hammond, R.P.; Anghel, V.N.; Katsaras, J. Atomic Structure Holography Using Thermal Neutrons. Nature 2001, 414, 525–527.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Nahar, L.; Sarker, S.D. Steroid Dimers; John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: Chichester, UK, 2012; ISBN 9781119970934.

An edited book

Crohn’s Disease: Radiological Features and Clinical-Surgical Correlations; Lo Re, G., Midiri, M., Eds.; Springer International Publishing: Cham, 2016; ISBN 9783319230658.

A chapter in an edited book

Baier, C.; Bertrand, N.; Bouyer, P.; Brihaye, T. When Are Timed Automata Determinizable? In Automata, Languages and Programming: 36th Internatilonal Collogquium, ICALP 2009, Rhodes, greece, July 5-12, 2009, Proceedings, Part II; Albers, S., Marchetti-Spaccamela, A., Matias, Y., Nikoletseas, S., Thomas, W., Eds.; Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2009; pp. 43–54 ISBN 9783642029295.

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

Hale, T. Watch Monster Magnetic Putty Devour Metal Objects Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/technology/watch-monster-magnetic-putty-devour-metal-objects/ (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 B-2 Bomber: Comparison of Operational Capabilities and Support Costs for 15 Versus 20 Aircraft; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1993;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Smith, B.L. A Qualitative Study of Veteran Students’ Perspectives of Their Academic Experiences. Doctoral dissertation, University of South Florida: Tampa, FL, 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

Martin, D. Aleksei Balabanov, 54, Russian Film Director. New York Times 2013, B10.

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

Research and Writing Guides