How to format your references using the Rice citation style

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

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Chadwick WW Jr (2006) Earth science. A submarine volcano is caught in the act. Science 314:1887–1888
A journal article with 2 authors
Brett MJ, Hawkeye MM (2008) Materials science. New materials at a glance. Science 319:1192–1193
A journal article with 3 authors
Catteruccia F, Godfray HCJ, Crisanti A (2003) Impact of genetic manipulation on the fitness of Anopheles stephensi mosquitoes. Science 299:1225–1227
A journal article with 5 or more authors
Hübner K, Fuhrmann G, Christenson LK, et al (2003) Derivation of oocytes from mouse embryonic stem cells. Science 300:1251–1256

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Bakus GJ (2007) Quantitative Analysis of Marine Biological Communities. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ
An edited book
L’Abate L (ed) (2012) Paradigms in Theory Construction. Springer, New York, NY
A chapter in an edited book
Lara MD, Doyen L (2008) Viable sequential decisions. In: Doyen L (ed) Sustainable Management of Natural Resources: Mathematical Models and Methods. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 73–106

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 Rice.

Blog post
Fang J (2015) Genetic Tweak Could Make All Mosquitoes Harmless Males. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/genetic-tweak-could-make-all-mosquitoes-harmless-males/. Accessed 30 Oct 2018

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 (1996) Reports and Testimony: December 1995. 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
Litt D (2010) Social networking sites and adolescent alcohol use: The role of social images, social norms, and social comparison. Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University

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
Schwartz J (2016) Max Ritvo, 25, Poet Who Chronicled His Cancer Fight. New York Times A14

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Chadwick 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Chadwick 2006; Brett and Hawkeye 2008).

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

  • Two authors: (Brett and Hawkeye 2008)
  • Three or more authors: (Hübner et al. 2003)

About the journal

Full journal titleRice
AbbreviationRice (N. Y.)
ISSN (print)1939-8425
ISSN (online)1939-8433
ScopeAgronomy and Crop Science
Plant Science
Soil Science

Other styles