How to format your references using the Science Translational Medicine citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Science Translational Medicine. 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. L. M. Witmer, Nostril position in dinosaurs and other vertebrates and its significance for nasal function. Science 293, 850–853 (2001).

A journal article with 2 authors

1. M. Abedin, N. King, The premetazoan ancestry of cadherins. Science 319, 946–948 (2008).

A journal article with 3 authors

1. R. Dean, M. B. Bonsall, T. Pizzari, Evolution. Aging and sexual conflict. Science 316, 383–384 (2007).

A journal article with 4 or more authors

1. D. K. Clare, P. J. Bakkes, H. van Heerikhuizen, S. M. van der Vies, H. R. Saibil, Chaperonin complex with a newly folded protein encapsulated in the folding chamber. Nature 457, 107–110 (2009).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. A. Hackshaw, A Concise Guide to Observational Studies in Healthcare (John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2014).

An edited book

1. A. Obi, Ed., Institutional constraints to small farmer development in Southern Africa (Wageningen Academic Publishers, Wageningen, 2011).

A chapter in an edited book

1. S. R. Fairclough, in Evolutionary Transitions to Multicellular Life: Principles and mechanisms, Advances in Marine Genomics. I. Ruiz-Trillo, A. M. Nedelcu, Eds. (Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 2015), pp. 99–116.

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 Translational Medicine.

Blog post

1. R. Andrews, Human Poop Has Snuck Into Some Coca-Cola CansIFLScience (2017) (available at https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/human-poop-has-snuck-into-some-cocacola-cans/).

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, Assistance Provided for the Construction of Higher Education Academic Facilities (U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1976).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. R. J. Yackel, thesis, University of Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ (2010).

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. A. Feuer, W. K. Rashbaum, Family Past Heightens Enigma of Judge’s DeathNew York Times , A20 (2017).

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

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	Science Translational Medicine
Abbreviation	Sci. Transl. Med.
ISSN (print)	1946-6234
ISSN (online)	1946-6242
Scope	General Medicine

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