How to format your references using the The Lancet Oncology citation style

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

Faber KT. Materials science. Small volumes create super(elastic) effects. Science 2013; 341: 1464–5.

A journal article with 2 authors

Schumacher MA, Funnell BE. Structures of ParB bound to DNA reveal mechanism of partition complex formation. Nature 2005; 438: 516–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

Schmidt MW, Vautravers MJ, Spero HJ. Rapid subtropical North Atlantic salinity oscillations across Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles. Nature 2006; 443: 561–4.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Laurance WF, Delamônica P, Laurance SG, Vasconcelos HL, Lovejoy TE. Rainforest fragmentation kills big trees. Nature 2000; 404: 836.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Römer H. Theoretical Optics. Weinheim, FRG: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, 2004.

An edited book

El Miedany Y, editor. Patient Reported Outcome Measures in Rheumatic Diseases. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Kiyomoto S, Henricksen M, Yap W-S, Nakano Y, Fukushima K. MASHA – Low Cost Authentication with a New Stream Cipher. In: Lai X, Zhou J, Li H, eds. Information Security: 14th International Conference, ISC 2011, Xi’an, China, October 26-29, 2011. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2011: 63–78.

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 The Lancet Oncology.

Blog post

Andrew D. There Are 14 Wild Orange-Bellied Parrots Left – This Summer Is Our Last Chance To Save Them. IFLScience. 2016; published online Nov 24. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/there-are-14-wild-orangebellied-parrots-left-this-summer-is-our-last-chance-to-save-them/ (accessed Oct 30, 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. Space Shuttle Accident: NASA’s Actions To Address the Presidential Commission Report. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1987.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Molina-Gutierrez E. Keys to my home: A grant proposal project. 2009.

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

Steven Lee Myers; Erin, Sophia Kishkovsky contributed reporting for this article. Suicide Bomber Kills 9 at Moscow Subway Station. New York Times. 2004; : A3.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

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	The Lancet Oncology
Abbreviation	Lancet Oncol.
ISSN (print)	1470-2045
ISSN (online)	1474-5488
Scope	Oncology

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