How to format your references using the Statistics and Probability Letters citation style

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

Hurtgen, M.T., 2012. Geochemistry. The marine sulfur cycle, revisited. Science 337, 305–306.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gann, A., Witkowski, J., 2010. The lost correspondence of Francis Crick. Nature 467, 519–524.

A journal article with 3 authors

Swain, M.R., Vasisht, G., Tinetti, G., 2008. The presence of methane in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet. Nature 452, 329–331.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Kassar-Duchossoy, L., Gayraud-Morel, B., Gomès, D., Rocancourt, D., Buckingham, M., Shinin, V., Tajbakhsh, S., 2004. Mrf4 determines skeletal muscle identity in Myf5:Myod double-mutant mice. Nature 431, 466–471.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Li, W., 2004. Risk Assessment of Power Systems. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Adão, T., 2016. Ontology-based Procedural Modelling of Traversable Buildings Composed by Arbitrary Shapes, SpringerBriefs in Computer Science. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

Iafrate, F., Stagnitti, A., Laghi, A., 2008. Preparazione del paziente e altri aspetti pratici, in: Passariello, R. (Ed.), La Colonscopia Virtuale. Springer, Milano, pp. 43–53.

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 Statistics and Probability Letters.

Blog post

Andrew, E., 2013. Origin of flowers has been discovered [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/origin-flowers-has-been-discovered/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1991. Airline Competition: Effects of Airline Market Concentration and Barriers to Entry on Airfares (No. RCED-91-101). U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Mott, C.R., 2010. Sun compass orientation in juvenile green sea turtles (Doctoral dissertation). Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL.

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

Sophia Kishkovsky; Compiled by, 2009. Contemporary Art Prize Is Awarded In Russia. New York Times C2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Hurtgen, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Gann and Witkowski, 2010; Hurtgen, 2012).

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

Two authors: (Gann and Witkowski, 2010)
Three or more authors: (Kassar-Duchossoy et al., 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	Statistics and Probability Letters
Abbreviation	Stat. Probab. Lett.
ISSN (print)	0167-7152
Scope	Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty Statistics and Probability