How to format your references using the Research Policy citation style

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

Dupont, L., 2012. Ecology. The human factor. Science 335, 1180–1181.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ratcliff, W.C., Denison, R.F., 2011. Microbiology. Alternative actions for antibiotics. Science 332, 547–548.

A journal article with 3 authors

Childers, S.E., Ciufo, S., Lovley, D.R., 2002. Geobacter metallireducens accesses insoluble Fe(III) oxide by chemotaxis. Nature 416, 767–769.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Jarosz, E., Mitchell, D.A., Wang, D.W., Teague, W.J., 2007. Bottom-up determination of air-sea momentum exchange under a major tropical cyclone. Science 315, 1707–1709.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Deroussi, L., 2016. Metaheuristics for Logistics. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Kundu, D., 2012. Statistical Signal Processing: Frequency Estimation, SpringerBriefs in Statistics. Springer India, New Delhi.

A chapter in an edited book

Ermentrout, G.B., Terman, D.H., 2010. The Variety of Channels, in: Terman, D.H. (Ed.), Mathematical Foundations of Neuroscience, Interdisciplinary Applied Mathematics. Springer, New York, NY, pp. 77–101.

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 Research Policy.

Blog post

Davis, J., 2016. CRISPR Gene Editing Used To Edit Out Sickle Cell Mutation [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1979. Programming Guide to Version 6.0 of Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) (No. 108440). U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Sutherland, K.A., 2009. The impact of early childhood programs on student achievement (Doctoral dissertation). Lindenwood University, St. Charles, MO.

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

(nyt), S.K., 2004. World Briefing | Europe: Russia: Compensation For Theater Siege. New York Times A6.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Dupont, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Dupont, 2012; Ratcliff and Denison, 2011).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Ratcliff and Denison, 2011)
Three or more authors: (Jarosz et al., 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	Research Policy
Abbreviation	Res. Policy
ISSN (print)	0048-7333
Scope	Management of Technology and Innovation Strategy and Management Management Science and Operations Research