How to format your references using the Solutions citation style

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

Derby, B. Printing and prototyping of tissues and scaffolds. Science (New York, N.Y.) 338, 921–926 (2012).

A journal article with 2 authors

Jacob, L & Lum, L. Deconstructing the hedgehog pathway in development and disease. Science (New York, N.Y.) 318, 66–68 (2007).

A journal article with 3 authors

Hays, GC,Houghton, JDR,& Myers, AE. Endangered species: Pan-Atlantic leatherback turtle movements. Nature 429, 522 (2004).

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Nowoshilow, S et al. The axolotl genome and the evolution of key tissue formation regulators. Nature 554, 50–55 (2018).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Searle, SR. Linear Models (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 1997).

An edited book

The Effects Of Noise On Aquatic Life II 875, (Springer, New York, NY, 2016).

A chapter in an edited book

Hajibagheri, A,Sukthankar, G,& Lakkaraju, K. in Social Informatics: 8th International Conference, SocInfo 2016, Bellevue, WA, USA, November 11-14, 2016, Proceedings, Part II (eds. Spiro, E. & Ahn, Y.-Y.) 55–70 (Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2016).

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 Solutions.

Blog post

Hale, T. A Chinese Doctor Is Now Planning A Human Head Transplant. IFLScience [online] (2016). https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/a-chinese-doctor-is-now-planning-a-human-head-transplant/

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. Data On The Office Of Education’s Use Of Funds For Conferences, Seminars, And Training Sessions, And Consultants, Experts, And Consulting Organizations In Lieu Of Federal Employees (U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1975).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Young, AJ. An Examination of Cultures of Innovation within Esoteric Technology Provider: A Look into Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE). (Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA, 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

Rothenberg, B. As Players Pull Out, Criticism Floods In. New York Times B8 (2017).

In-text citations

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

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	Solutions
ISSN (print)	2154-0896
ISSN (online)	2154-0926
Scope