How to format your references using the Societies citation style

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

Jacobs, M. A Career Is like a Love Affair. Science 2015, 348, 150.

A journal article with 2 authors

Bell, J.J.; Bhandoola, A. The Earliest Thymic Progenitors for T Cells Possess Myeloid Lineage Potential. Nature 2008, 452, 764–767.

A journal article with 3 authors

Burkett, V.; Groat, C.G.; Reed, D. Hurricanes Not the Key to a Sustainable Coast. Science 2007, 315, 1366–1368.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Faure, J.; Rechatin, C.; Norlin, A.; Lifschitz, A.; Glinec, Y.; Malka, V. Controlled Injection and Acceleration of Electrons in Plasma Wakefields by Colliding Laser Pulses. Nature 2006, 444, 737–739.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Cherrie, J.W.; Howie, R.M.; Semple, S. Monitoring for Health Hazards at Work; Wiley-Blackwell: Oxford, UK, 2010; ISBN 9781444323313.

An edited book

Pei, C. China’s Outbound Foreign Direct Investment Promotion System; Zheng, W., Ed.; Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2015; ISBN 9783662456309.

A chapter in an edited book

Chun-hong, C.; Chuan, T.; Da-zhe, Z.; Bin, Z. The Parametric Design Based on Bee Dual Population Evolution on Chaos. In Electrical, Information Engineering and Mechatronics 2011: Proceedings of the 2011 International Conference on Electrical, Information Engineering and Mechatronics (EIEM 2011); Wang, X., Wang, F., Zhong, S., Eds.; Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering; Springer: London, 2012; pp. 35–42 ISBN 9781447124665.

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 Societies.

Blog post

Andrew, E. A Russian Spacecraft Is Heading For A Fiery Demise Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/space/russian-spacecraft-heading-fiery-demise/ (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 K-12 Education: States’ Test Security Policies and Procedures Varied; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 2013;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Yu, H. Parasitism of Subterranean Termites (Isoptera: Rhinotermitidae: Termitidae) by Entomopathogenic Nematodes (Nematoda: Steinernematidae: Heterorhabditidae). Doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona: Tucson, AZ, 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

Wagner, J. Mets Evaluate Their Options at First Base After Duda Is Sidelined by Hip Stiffness. New York Times 2017, SP3.

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	Societies
Abbreviation	Societies (Basel)
ISSN (online)	2075-4698
Scope