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

Kessin, R. H. (2010). Microbiology. Sex and sacrifice. Science (New York, N.Y.), 330(6010), 1487–1488.

A journal article with 2 authors

Sun, F., & He, S. (2014). Transformation magneto-statics and illusions for magnets. Scientific reports, 4, 6593.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kamat, S. S., Williams, H. J., & Raushel, F. M. (2011). Intermediates in the transformation of phosphonates to phosphate by bacteria. Nature, 480(7378), 570–573.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Collison, L. W., Workman, C. J., Kuo, T. T., Boyd, K., Wang, Y., Vignali, K. M., … Vignali, D. A. A. (2007). The inhibitory cytokine IL-35 contributes to regulatory T-cell function. Nature, 450(7169), 566–569.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Seabridge, A., & Morgan, S. (2010). Air Travel and Health. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Yon-Kahn, J. (2010). Molecular and Cellular Enzymology. (G. Hervé, Ed.). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

MacCallum, D. (2007). Candida Albicans: New Insights in Infection, Disease, and Treatment. In K. Kavanagh (Ed.), New Insights in Medical Mycology (pp. 99–129). 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 Quality of Life Research.

Blog post

Hamilton, K. (2015, March 1). This Is What Your Brain Looks Like With Alzheimer’s Disease. IFLScience. IFLScience. Retrieved October 30, 2018, from

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. (1992). Aircraft Certification: Limited Progress on Developing International Design Standards (No. RCED-92-179). 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

Crider, M. C. (2012). The social and environmental effects of shrimp mariculture: Case studies of two coastal villages in Ecuador (Doctoral dissertation). Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL.

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

Branch, J. (2016, August 9). Granular Perspective on a Suitable Shore. New York Times, p. B12.

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

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