How to format your references using the Sports citation style

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

Reynolds, C.R. The Evolution of Sensibility. Nature 2005, 434, 316–319.

A journal article with 2 authors

Smith, A.J.; Schwappach, B. Cell Biology. Think Vesicular Chloride. Science 2010, 328, 1364–1365.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ruthazer, E.S.; Akerman, C.J.; Cline, H.T. Control of Axon Branch Dynamics by Correlated Activity in Vivo. Science 2003, 301, 66–70.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Obraztsov, P.A.; Kaplas, T.; Garnov, S.V.; Kuwata-Gonokami, M.; Obraztsov, A.N.; Svirko, Y.P. All-Optical Control of Ultrafast Photocurrents in Unbiased Graphene. Sci. Rep. 2014, 4, 4007.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Cross, M.; MacDonald, B. Nutrition in Institutions; Wiley-Blackwell: Oxford, UK, 2008; ISBN 9781444301663.

An edited book

Nishida, T. Chimpanzee Behavior in the Wild: An Audio-Visual Encyclopedia; Zamma, K., Matsusaka, T., Inaba, A., McGrew, W.C., Eds.; Springer Japan: Tokyo, 2010; ISBN 9784431538943.

A chapter in an edited book

Li, Z.; Li, X. Quantification of Spike-LFP Synchronization. In Signal Processing in Neuroscience; Li, X., Ed.; Springer: Singapore, 2016; pp. 57–75 ISBN 9789811018213.

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 Sports.

Blog post

Andrew, E. Baby Stegosaurus Tracks Modeled in 3D Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/baby-stegosaurus-tracks-modeled-3d/ (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 Comments on Proposed Legislation to Prohibit the Discharging of Fuel at Sea; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1977;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Jakubowski, J.K. Making Character Education a Reality: An Investigation of Secondary Teachers’ Perspectives toward Implementation. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach: Long Beach, CA, 2013.

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

Kenigsberg, B. Sea Dogs, G.I.s and Ballet Divas. New York Times 2017, AR43.

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	Sports
Abbreviation	Sports
ISSN (online)	2075-4663
Scope