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

Barnes, D.K., 2001. Resource availability: Ancient homes for hard-up hermit crabs. Nature 412, 785–786.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kump, L.R., Pollard, D., 2008. Amplification of Cretaceous warmth by biological cloud feedbacks. Science 320, 195.

A journal article with 3 authors

Cravatt, B.F., Simon, G.M., Yates, J.R., 3rd, 2007. The biological impact of mass-spectrometry-based proteomics. Nature 450, 991–1000.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Proverbio, A.M., Calbi, M., Manfredi, M., Zani, A., 2014. Audio-visuomotor processing in the musician’s brain: an ERP study on professional violinists and clarinetists. Sci. Rep. 4, 5866.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lebowitz, E.R., Omer, H., 2013. Treating Childhood and Adolescent Anxiety. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Masferrer, A., García-Sánchez, E. (Eds.), 2016. Human Dignity of the Vulnerable in the Age of Rights: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Ius Gentium: Comparative Perspectives on Law and Justice. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

van Hillegersberg, R., 2015. Esophagectomy for Cancer, in: Spinoglio, G. (Ed.), Robotic Surgery: Current Applications and New Trends, Updates in Surgery. Springer, Milano, pp. 43–50.

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

Hale, T., 2016. This Student’s Portable Vaccine “Mini-Fridge” Could Save Thousands Of Lives [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/this-students-portable-vaccine-minifridge-could-save-thousands-of-lives/ (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, 2001. Alternative Market Mechanisms for the Student Loan Program (No. GAO-02-84SP). 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

Sheah, J., 2015. Reading Dreams: Representation of Dreams Through Artists’ Books (Doctoral dissertation). George Washington University, Washington, DC.

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

Sehgal, P., 2017. McPhee on McPhee: A Master’s Valedictory Lap. New York Times C3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Barnes, 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Barnes, 2001; Kump and Pollard, 2008).

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

Two authors: (Kump and Pollard, 2008)
Three or more authors: (Proverbio et al., 2014)

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