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

Schreiner, P.R., 2010. Chemistry. Cooperativity tames reactive catalysts. Science 327, 965–966.

A journal article with 2 authors

Pizzarello, S., Weber, A.L., 2004. Prebiotic amino acids as asymmetric catalysts. Science 303, 1151.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ward, C.V., Kimbel, W.H., Johanson, D.C., 2011. Complete fourth metatarsal and arches in the foot of Australopithecus afarensis. Science 331, 750–753.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Gomes, K.K., Pasupathy, A.N., Pushp, A., Ono, S., Ando, Y., Yazdani, A., 2007. Visualizing pair formation on the atomic scale in the high-Tc superconductor Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+delta. Nature 447, 569–572.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Rankin, J., 2008. Effects of Antenatal Exercise on Psychological Well-Being, Pregnancy and Birth Outcome. Whurr Publishers Ltd, Philadelphia, PA, USA.

An edited book

Kondo, K., Akolkar, R.N., Barkey, D.P., Yokoi, M. (Eds.), 2014. Copper Electrodeposition for Nanofabrication of Electronics Devices, Nanostructure Science and Technology. Springer, New York, NY.

A chapter in an edited book

Kang, D., Miyaguni, S., Miyagi, H., Mitsui, I., Ozawa, K., Fujita, M., Shoji, N., 2010. Classification of Fatigue Bills Based on K-Means by Using Creases Feature, in: Leon F. de Carvalho, A.P. de, Rodríguez-González, S., Paz Santana, J.F.D., Rodríguez, J.M.C. (Eds.), Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence: 7th International Symposium, Advances in Intelligent and Soft Computing. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 27–33.

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

Taub, B., 2017. New Study Could Help Map Mankind’s Journey Out Of Africa [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/new-study-could-help-map-mankinds-journey-out-africa/ (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, 2003. Aviation Finance: Implementation of General Aviation Entitlement Grants (No. GAO-03-347). 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

Teague, H.L., 2017. A Mixed Methods Study of Online Course Facilitators’ Perceptions of Mobile Technology, Design, and TPaCK Affordances (Doctoral dissertation). Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA.

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

Rothenberg, B., 2017. Nadal Seeks to Recapture Wimbledon Success. New York Times B13.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Schreiner, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Pizzarello and Weber, 2004; Schreiner, 2010).

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

Two authors: (Pizzarello and Weber, 2004)
Three or more authors: (Gomes et al., 2007)

About the journal

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