How to format your references using the Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry. 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

Watanabe M. Immunology goes global. Nature. 2005;435(7046):1282-1283.

A journal article with 2 authors

Halfar J, Fujita RM. Ecology. Danger of deep-sea mining. Science. 2007;316(5827):987.

A journal article with 3 authors

Exadaktylos F, Espín AM, Brañas-Garza P. Experimental subjects are not different. Sci Rep. 2013;3:1213.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Ferguson NM, Keeling MJ, Edmunds WJ, et al. Planning for smallpox outbreaks. Nature. 2003;425(6959):681-685.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Marston RC. Portfolio Design. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2011.

An edited book

Catoni F. The Mathematics of Minkowski Space-Time: With an Introduction to Commutative Hypercomplex Numbers. (Boccaletti D, Cannata R, Catoni V, Nichelatti E, Zampetti P, eds.). Birkhäuser; 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

Artamonov VA, Chubarov IA. Dual Algebras of Some Semisimple Finite-dimensional Hopf Algebras. In: Brzeziński T, Gómez Pardo JL, Shestakov I, Smith PF, eds. Modules and Comodules. Birkhäuser; 2008:65-85.

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 Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry.

Blog post

Andrew E. Discovery of More Genes Associated With Alzheimer’s Disease. IFLScience. Published October 28, 2013. Accessed October 30, 2018. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/discovery-more-genes-associated-alzheimer’s-disease/

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. Internal Control Weaknesses in Army Safeguarding of Computer Equipment. U.S. Government Printing Office; 1992.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Mcfarlane N. Information Power Efficiency Tradeoffs in Mixed Signal CMOS Circuits. Doctoral dissertation. University of Maryland, College Park; 2010.

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

Hollander S. Everybody Into the Pool. New York Times. November 6, 2002:D6.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

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	Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry
Abbreviation	Rapid Commun. Mass Spectrom.
ISSN (print)	0951-4198
ISSN (online)	1097-0231
Scope	Analytical Chemistry Organic Chemistry Spectroscopy