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

Hernanz, M. (2015). Astrophysics: A lithium-rich stellar explosion. Nature, 518(7539), 307–308.

A journal article with 2 authors

Dong, R.-Y., & Cao, B.-Y. (2014). Anomalous orientations of a rigid carbon nanotube in a sheared fluid. Scientific reports, 4, 6120.

A journal article with 3 authors

Torre, R., Bartolini, P., & Righini, R. (2004). Structural relaxation in supercooled water by time-resolved spectroscopy. Nature, 428(6980), 296–299.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Field, D. B., Baumgartner, T. R., Charles, C. D., Ferreira-Bartrina, V., & Ohman, M. D. (2006). Planktonic foraminifera of the California Current reflect 20th-century warming. Science (New York, N.Y.), 311(5757), 63–66.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Weinberg, S. (2011). Cost-Contained Regulatory Compliance. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Li, J., Zlatanova, S., & Fabbri, A. G. (Eds.). (2007). Geomatics Solutions for Disaster Management. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Rong, J., & Wang, F. (2016). Conclusion. In F. Wang (Ed.), Metasomatic Textures in Granites: Evidence from Petrographic Observation (pp. 143–144). Singapore: Springer.

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

Davis, J. (2015, October 7). 2015 Nobel Prize For Chemistry Awarded For DNA Repair Studies. IFLScience. IFLScience. 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. (1994). Gray Market Vehicle Program: Extension Warranted, but Improvements in Vehicle Identification Are Needed (No. RCED-94-22). 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

Othmanawny, G. (2017). Soaked and Unsoaked Performance of Crushed Gravel and Limestone Aggregates (Doctoral dissertation). Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL.

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

Greenhouse, L. (2007, January 6). Justices to Consider Impact of Mental Illness on Death Penalty. New York Times, p. A12.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Hernanz 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Dong and Cao 2014; Hernanz 2015).

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

Two authors: (Dong and Cao 2014)
Three or more authors: (Field et al. 2006)

About the journal

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

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