How to format your references using the Symmetry citation style

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

Gaston, K.J. Ecology: The Importance of Being Rare. Nature 2012, 487, 46–47.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hauert, C.; Doebeli, M. Spatial Structure Often Inhibits the Evolution of Cooperation in the Snowdrift Game. Nature 2004, 428, 643–646.

A journal article with 3 authors

Baer, B.; Armitage, S.A.O.; Boomsma, J.J. Sperm Storage Induces an Immunity Cost in Ants. Nature 2006, 441, 872–875.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Farroni, T.; Chiarelli, A.M.; Lloyd-Fox, S.; Massaccesi, S.; Merla, A.; Di Gangi, V.; Mattarello, T.; Faraguna, D.; Johnson, M.H. Infant Cortex Responds to Other Humans from Shortly after Birth. Sci. Rep. 2013, 3, 2851.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Dudbridge, M. Handbook of Seal Integrity in the Food Industry; John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: Chichester, UK, 2016; ISBN 9781118904619.

An edited book

Re-Irradiation: New Frontiers; Nieder, C., Langendijk, J.A., Eds.; Medical Radiology; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2011; ISBN 9783642124679.

A chapter in an edited book

Altland, A.; Egger, R. Nonequilibrium Transport and Dephasing in Coulomb-Blockaded Quantum Dots. In Modern Theories of Many-Particle Systems in Condensed Matter Physics; Cabra, D.C., Honecker, A., Pujol, P., Eds.; Lecture Notes in Physics; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2012; pp. 215–244 ISBN 9783642104480.

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 Symmetry.

Blog post

Fang, J. Successful Spider Cities Require Just the Right Mix of Females (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 Highway Financing: Participating States Benefit Under Toll Facilities Pilot Program; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1990;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Grace, J. A Correlational Study of the Relationship Between TEAS V and Success in Licensed Practical Nursing Students. Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix: Phoenix, AZ, 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

Gorman, J. Older Bonobos Could Sure Use Some Glasses. New York Times 2016, D6.

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	Symmetry
Abbreviation	Symmetry (Basel)
ISSN (online)	2073-8994
Scope	Chemistry (miscellaneous) Computer Science (miscellaneous) General Mathematics Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)