How to format your references using the Sexually Transmitted Infections citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Sexually Transmitted Infections. 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

Melançon CE 3rd. Biochemistry: Elusive source of sulfur unravelled. Nature. 2015;518:45–6.

A journal article with 2 authors

Haushofer J, Fehr E. On the psychology of poverty. Science. 2014;344:862–7.

A journal article with 3 authors

Akbarzadeh A, Qiu C-W, Danner AJ. Exploiting design freedom in biaxial dielectrics to enable spatially overlapping optical instruments. Sci Rep. 2013;3:2055.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Zhang L, Meng W-Q, Lu L, et al. Selective detection of endogenous H₂S in living cells and the mouse hippocampus using a ratiometric fluorescent probe. Sci Rep. 2014;4:5870.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wagner-Martin L. A History of American Literature. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2012.

An edited book

Ralyté J, España S, Pastor Ó, editors. The Practice of Enterprise Modeling: 8th IFIP WG 8.1. Working Conference, PoEM 2015, Valencia, Spain, November 10-12, 2015, Proceedings. 1st ed. 2015. Cham: Springer International Publishing 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

Neuhouser ML, Patterson RE, Kristal AR, et al. Dietary Supplements and Cancer Risk. In: Bendich A, Deckelbaum RJ, eds. Preventive Nutrition: The Comprehensive Guide for Health Professionals. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press 2005:89–121.

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 Sexually Transmitted Infections.

Blog post

Andrew E. Could The Pill Save The Polar Bear? IFLScience. 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/could-pill-save-polar-bear/ (accessed 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. Schools and Libraries Corporation: Actions Needed to Strengthen Program Integrity Operations Before Committing Funds. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office 1998.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Charoenphol D. Using robust statistical methodology to evaluate the performance of project delivery systems: A case study of horizontal construction. 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

Hodara S. Depicting Envy, ‘the Most Corrosive of the Sins’. New York Times. 2015;WE8.

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	Sexually Transmitted Infections
Abbreviation	Sex. Transm. Infect.
ISSN (print)	1368-4973
ISSN (online)	1472-3263
Scope	Dermatology Infectious Diseases