How to format your references using the Review of Scientific Instruments citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Review of Scientific Instruments. 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

¹ W.G. Scott, “Structural biology: How fluorescent RNA gets its glow,” Nature 513(7516), 42–43 (2014).

A journal article with 2 authors

¹ J. Peñuelas, and I. Filella, “Phenology. Responses to a warming world,” Science 294(5543), 793–795 (2001).

A journal article with 3 authors

¹ L. Gu, A.R. Koymen, and S.K. Mohanty, “Crystalline magnetic carbon nanoparticle assisted photothermal delivery into cells using CW near-infrared laser beam,” Sci. Rep. 4, 5106 (2014).

A journal article with 4 or more authors

¹ J.E. Lee, M.L. Fusco, A.J. Hessell, W.B. Oswald, D.R. Burton, and E.O. Saphire, “Structure of the Ebola virus glycoprotein bound to an antibody from a human survivor,” Nature 454(7201), 177–182 (2008).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

¹ R. Prud’Homme, Flows and Chemical Reactions in Homogeneous Mixtures (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ USA, 2013).

An edited book

¹ S. Sumathi, Fundamentals of Relational Database Management Systems (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2007).

A chapter in an edited book

¹ E. Antonucci, “Wind in the Solar Corona: Dynamics and Composition,” in Solar Dynamics and Its Effects on the Heliosphere and Earth, edited by D.N. Baker, B. Klecker, S.J. Schwartz, R. Schwenn, and R.V. Steiger, (Springer, New York, NY, 2007), pp. 35–50.

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 Review of Scientific Instruments.

Blog post

¹ J. Fang, “Cod Collapse Linked To Rapidly Warming Gulf Waters,” IFLScience, (2015).

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

¹ Government Accountability Office, Broadband Internet: FCC Should Track the Application of Fixed Internet Usage-Based Pricing and Help Improve Consumer Education (U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2014).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

¹ A.Y. Pelayo, A Program to Increase Health Literacy for Older Latino Adults Residing in La Habra, California: A Grant Proposal, Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 2017.

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

¹ B. Brantley, “A ‘Torch’ Still Sears,” New York Times, C1 (2017).

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	Review of Scientific Instruments
Abbreviation	Rev. Sci. Instrum.
ISSN (print)	0034-6748
ISSN (online)	1089-7623
Scope	Instrumentation