How to format your references using the Synthese citation style

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

Beaudet, A. L. (2010). Which way for genetic-test regulation? Leave test interpretation to specialists. Nature, 466(7308), 816–817.

A journal article with 2 authors

Handschin, C., & Spiegelman, B. M. (2008). The role of exercise and PGC1alpha in inflammation and chronic disease. Nature, 454(7203), 463–469.

A journal article with 3 authors

Blum, R., Kafitz, K. W., & Konnerth, A. (2002). Neurotrophin-evoked depolarization requires the sodium channel Na(V)1.9. Nature, 419(6908), 687–693.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Zhao, Y., Lu, H., Yan, A., Yang, Y., Meng, Q., Sun, L., et al. (2013). ABCC3 as a marker for multidrug resistance in non-small cell lung cancer. Scientific reports, 3, 3120.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Mubarak, S. (2010). Construction Project Scheduling and Control. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Shi, Y., & Clegg, D. O. (Eds.). (2008). Stem Cell Research and Therapeutics (Vol. 1). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Rao, K. R., & Paranjpe, A. C. (2016). Self, Person, and Personality. In A. C. Paranjpe (Ed.), Psychology in the Indian Tradition (pp. 129–165). New Delhi: Springer India.

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 Synthese.

Blog post

Hale, T. (2017, January 25). The Wildlife Photographer Of The Year Reveals The People’s Choice Award. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/the-wildlife-photographer-of-the-year-reveals-the-peoples-choice-award/. Accessed 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. (1982). Attrition of Scientists at Three Regulatory Agencies (No. PAD-83-16). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Eldridge, Z. (2017). The Empowerment of a Forgotten Population (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

Doran, M. (2017, May 19). A Trump Plan for the Middle East? New York Times, p. A29.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Beaudet 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Beaudet 2010; Handschin and Spiegelman 2008).

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

Two authors: (Handschin and Spiegelman 2008)
Three or more authors: (Zhao et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Synthese
Abbreviation	Synthese
ISSN (print)	0039-7857
ISSN (online)	1573-0964
Scope	Philosophy General Social Sciences