How to format your references using the Royal Society Open Science citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Royal Society Open Science. 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

Buratowski S. 2012 Gene expression: transcription initiation unwrapped. Nature 483, 286–287.

A journal article with 2 authors

Crisp RJ, Meleady R. 2012 Adapting to a multicultural future. Science 336, 853–855.

A journal article with 3 authors

Meloso D, Copic J, Bossaerts P. 2009 Promoting intellectual discovery: patents versus markets. Science 323, 1335–1339.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Horner-Devine MC, Lage M, Hughes JB, Bohannan BJM. 2004 A taxa-area relationship for bacteria. Nature 432, 750–753.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Blackford R, Schüklenk U. 2013 50 Great Myths about Atheism. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Wu AM, editor. 2011 The Molecular Immunology of Complex Carbohydrates-3. Boston, MA: Springer US.

A chapter in an edited book

Bierman G, Meijer E, Torgersen M. 2010 Adding Dynamic Types to C $^\sharp$. In ECOOP 2010 – Object-Oriented Programming: 24th European Conference, Maribor, Slovenia, June 21-25, 2010. Proceedings (ed T D’Hondt), pp. 76–100. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

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 Royal Society Open Science.

Blog post

Andrews R. 2017 Researchers Find Psychological ‘Vaccine’ Against Fake News. IFLScience. See https://www.iflscience.com/brain/researchers-find-psychological-vaccine-against-fake-news/ (accessed on 30 October 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. 1994 Telecommunications: FCC Procedures Delay Release of Decision Documents.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Williams AP. 2012 Reentry of Substance Abusing Female Ex-Offenders from Prison to an Urban Community. 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

Burghardt LF. 2006 An Animal Sanctuary Is Under Pressure to Move. New York Times, 20 August. , 14LI6.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

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	Royal Society Open Science
Abbreviation	R. Soc. Open Sci.
ISSN (online)	2054-5703
Scope