How to format your references using the Social and Natural Sciences Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Social and Natural Sciences Journal. 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

Smaglik, P. (2008). Closing the gaps. Nature, 452(7185), 382–383.

A journal article with 2 authors

Barnes, W., & Sambles, R. (2004). Physics. Only skin deep. Science (New York, N.Y.), 305(5685), 785–786.

A journal article with 3 authors

D’Hondt, S., Rutherford, S., & Spivack, A. J. (2002). Metabolic activity of subsurface life in deep-sea sediments. Science (New York, N.Y.), 295(5562), 2067–2070.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Perkins, T. T., Dalal, R. V., Mitsis, P. G., & Block, S. M. (2003). Sequence-dependent pausing of single lambda exonuclease molecules. Science (New York, N.Y.), 301(5641), 1914–1918.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Willis, D. O. (2013). Business Basics for Dentists. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Wang, L., Jiang, J., Lu, J., Hong, L., & Liu, B. (Eds.). (2012). Web-Age Information Management: WAIM 2011 International Workshops: WGIM 2011, XMLDM 2011, SNA 2011, Wuhan, China, September 14-16, 2011, Revised Selected Papers (Vol. 7142). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Yan, W., Wang, W., Shan, Y., Yang, K., & Sha, W. (2015). Carbide-Strengthened Reduced Activation Heat-Resistant Steels. In W. Wang, Y. Shan, K. Yang, & W. Sha (Eds.), 9-12Cr Heat-Resistant Steels (pp. 65–81). Springer International Publishing.

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 Social and Natural Sciences Journal.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015, September 25). Why Do People Feel ‘A Rose By Any Other Name’ Wouldn’t Fit As Well? IFLScience; IFLScience.

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. (1973). Examination Into Certain Contract Costs for the E-2C Aircraft Program (B-163058). U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Stewart, D. A. (2013). Principals’ post-observation feedback and its influence on teacher professional growth at two Southern California Catholic high schools [Doctoral dissertation]. Pepperdine 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

Mcgirr, M. (2017, July 22). Sink Into the Silence of Summer. New York Times, SR9.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Smaglik, 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Barnes & Sambles, 2004; Smaglik, 2008).

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

Two authors: (Barnes & Sambles, 2004)
Three authors: (D’Hondt et al., 2002)
6 or more authors: (Perkins et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal title	Social and Natural Sciences Journal
ISSN (print)	1804-4158
ISSN (online)	1804-9710
Scope

Research and Writing Guides