How to format your references using the Science citation style

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

V. Marx, When disease strikes from nowhere. Nature. 513, 445–448 (2014).

A journal article with 2 authors

C. Class, S. L. Goldstein, Evolution of helium isotopes in the Earth’s mantle. Nature. 436, 1107–1112 (2005).

A journal article with 3 authors

H. S. Engler, K. C. Spencer, L. E. Gilbert, Preventing cyanide release from leaves. Nature. 406, 144–145 (2000).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

F. Hsiung, F.-A. Ramirez-Weber, D. D. Iwaki, T. B. Kornberg, Dependence of Drosophila wing imaginal disc cytonemes on Decapentaplegic. Nature. 437, 560–563 (2005).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

R. E. Banks, J. M. Sharp, S. D. Doss, D. A. Vanderford, Exotic Small Mammal Care and Husbandry (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Ames, Iowa, USA, 2016).

An edited book

A. D. Isabelle, Inspiring STEM Minds: Biographies and Activities for Elementary Classrooms (SensePublishers, Rotterdam, 2016).

A chapter in an edited book

J. Olson, P. Champagne, E. Roth, B. Evtimov, R. Clappier, T. Nast, T. Renna, B. Martin, in Cryocoolers 13, R. G. Ross, Ed. (Springer US, Boston, MA, 2006), pp. 25–30.

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 Science.

Blog post

E. Andrew, Sea Lion Plays With Little Girl - But Watch What Happens When She Falls Down. IFLScience (2014), (available at https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/sea-lion-plays-little-girl-watch-what-happens-when-she-falls-down/).

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, “Comments on H.R. 6228” (112145, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1980).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

L. Hernandez, thesis, California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA (2009).

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

M. Pilon, Path of Saudi Arabian Trailblazer Runs Through the United States. New York Times (2012), p. D5.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text

About the journal

Full journal title	Science
Abbreviation	Science
ISSN (print)	0036-8075
ISSN (online)	1095-9203
Scope	Multidisciplinary

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