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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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.
Ryan, A.J. Journal Club. A Chemist Welcomes an Ingenious Advance in Plastics Technology. Nature 2009, 458, 553.
A journal article with 2 authors
1.
Shekhawat, G.S.; Dravid, V.P. Nanoscale Imaging of Buried Structures via Scanning Near-Field Ultrasound Holography. Science 2005, 310, 89–92.
A journal article with 3 authors
1.
Smith, J.; Van Dyken, J.D.; Zee, P.C. A Generalization of Hamilton’s Rule for the Evolution of Microbial Cooperation. Science 2010, 328, 1700–1703.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
1.
Tu, X.; Manohar, S.; Jagota, A.; Zheng, M. DNA Sequence Motifs for Structure-Specific Recognition and Separation of Carbon Nanotubes. Nature 2009, 460, 250–253.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
1.
Samuel, G.R. Formulas and Calculations for Drilling Operations; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ, 2010; ISBN 9781118010235.
An edited book
1.
Everyday Youth Literacies: Critical Perspectives for New Times; Sanford, K., Rogers, T., Kendrick, M., Eds.; Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinarity in Education; Springer: Singapore, 2014; Vol. 1; ISBN 9789814451024.
A chapter in an edited book
1.
Liu, Y.; Chen, L. Control of Chaotic Attitude Motion. In Chaos in Attitude Dynamics of Spacecraft; Chen, L., Ed.; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2013; pp. 131–163 ISBN 9783642300790.

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
1.
Andrew, E. The Tropical Steam-Engine: How Does El Niño Warm The Entire Globe? (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
1.
Government Accountability Office Earth Observing System: NASA’s EOSDIS Development Approach Is Risky; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1992;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
1.
Hurwitz, B.L. Viral Community Dynamics and Functional Specialization in the Pacific Ocean. Doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona: Tucson, AZ, 2012.

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.
(nyt), S.K. World Briefing | Europe: Russia: Officers Cleared Of Chechen Deaths. New York Times 2005, A11.

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 titleSocieties
AbbreviationSocieties (Basel)
ISSN (online)2075-4698
Scope

Other styles