How to format your references using the Research Policy: X citation style

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

Stewart, I., I., 2000. Mathematics. The Lorenz attractor exists. Nature 406, 948–949.

A journal article with 2 authors

Cox, E., Bonner, J., 2001. Ecology. The advantages of togetherness. Science 292, 448–449.

A journal article with 3 authors

Joliveau, E., Smith, J., Wolfe, J., 2004. Acoustics: tuning of vocal tract resonance by sopranos. Nature 427, 116.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Reganold, J.P., Glover, J.D., Andrews, P.K., Hinman, H.R., 2001. Sustainability of three apple production systems. Nature 410, 926–930.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bonilla, L.L., Teitsworth, S.W., 2010. Nonlinear Wave Methods for Charge Transport. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany.

An edited book

Hassan, O.H., Abidin, S.Z., Anwar, R., Kamaruzaman, M.F. (Eds.), 2015. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Research of Arts, Design and Humanities (ISRADH 2014), 1st ed. 2015. ed. Springer, Singapore.

A chapter in an edited book

Zhong, R., Ye, Z.-H., 2013. Transcriptional Regulation of Wood Formation in Tree Species, in: Fromm, J. (Ed.), Cellular Aspects of Wood Formation, Plant Cell Monographs. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 141–158.

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: X.

Blog post

Andrew, E., 2014. Flies Evade Swatting With Fighter Jet-Like Maneuvering [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/flies-evade-swatting-fighter-jet-maneuvering/ (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, 1974. Assessment of the Work Incentive Program in Washington State (No. B-164031(3)). 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

Arens, J.L., 2015. Power, Oppression, and Group Difference Interrogation: A Call to Social Justice Movement Organizations (Doctoral dissertation). George Washington University, Washington, DC.

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

Murphy, M.J.O., 2015. Weekend Entertainments From the Archives of The New York Times. New York Times C25.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Stewart, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Cox and Bonner, 2001; Stewart, 2000).

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

Two authors: (Cox and Bonner, 2001)
Three or more authors: (Reganold et al., 2001)

About the journal

Full journal title	Research Policy: X
ISSN (print)	2590-1451
Scope