How to format your references using the Quality of Life Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Quality of Life Research. 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

Ihde, D. (2000). Putting technology in its place. Nature, 404(6781), 935.

A journal article with 2 authors

Basler, M., & Mekalanos, J. J. (2012). Type 6 secretion dynamics within and between bacterial cells. Science (New York, N.Y.), 337(6096), 815.

A journal article with 3 authors

Childs, A. M., Gosset, D., & Webb, Z. (2013). Universal computation by multiparticle quantum walk. Science (New York, N.Y.), 339(6121), 791–794.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Opris, I., Santos, L., Gerhardt, G. A., Song, D., Berger, T. W., Hampson, R. E., & Deadwyler, S. A. (2013). Prefrontal cortical microcircuits bind perception to executive control. Scientific reports, 3, 2285.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Berntsen, E. S., & Thompson, J. (2015). A Guide to Starting Your Hedge Fund. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Li, C. (2016). The Chang’E-1 Topographic Atlas of the Moon. (J. Liu, L. Mu, X. Ren, & W. Zuo, Eds.) (2nd ed. 2016.). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Lee, D. S., Lee, K. C., & Jo, N. Y. (2013). A Creative Generation Task Under Stress: Comparison of a Stress Group with a Non-stress Group. In K. C. Lee (Ed.), Digital Creativity: Individuals, Groups, and Organizations (pp. 47–60). New York, NY: Springer.

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 Quality of Life Research.

Blog post

Luntz, S. (2016, May 25). Sibling Rivalry Is A Weighty Issue For Meerkats. IFLScience. IFLScience. Retrieved October 30, 2018, from https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/sibling-rivalry-weighty-issue-meerkats/

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. (2016). Federal Research Opportunities: DOE, DOD, and HHS Need Better Guidance for Participant Activities (No. GAO-16-128). 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

Hess, J. P. (2012). Exploring the Challenges of Training and Developing Millennials in the Business Environment (Doctoral dissertation). Northcentral University, Scottsdale, AZ.

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

Crow, K. (2001, April 22). Giving an Unexpected Twist to “Keep Off the Grass.” New York Times, p. 148.

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	Quality of Life Research
Abbreviation	Qual. Life Res.
ISSN (print)	0962-9343
ISSN (online)	1573-2649
Scope	Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health