How to format your references using the TOP citation style

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

Brashares JS (2010) Ecology. Filtering wildlife. Science 329:402–403

A journal article with 2 authors

Kirwan ML, Mudd SM (2012) Response of salt-marsh carbon accumulation to climate change. Nature 489:550–553

A journal article with 3 authors

Pál C, Papp B, Hurst LD (2003) Genomic function: Rate of evolution and gene dispensability. Nature 421:496–7; discussion 497-8

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Neuser K, Triphan T, Mronz M, et al (2008) Analysis of a spatial orientation memory in Drosophila. Nature 453:1244–1247

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Grant G (2016) The Water Sensitive City. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Gatto L (2016) Hasse-Schmidt Derivations on Grassmann Algebras: With Applications to Vertex Operators. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Chin A, Juhn C (2011) Does Reducing College Costs Improve Educational Outcomes for Undocumented Immigrants? Evidence from State Laws Permitting Undocumented Immigrants to Pay In-State Tuition at State Colleges and Universities. In: Leal DL, Trejo SJ (eds) Latinos and the Economy: Integration and Impact in Schools, Labor Markets, and Beyond. Springer, New York, NY, pp 63–94

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 TOP.

Blog post

Taub B (2016) THC Could Remove Alzheimer’s Plaques From The Brain. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/thc-may-weapon-against-alzheimer-s/. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (1977) The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s System of Accounting for Accounts Receivable. 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

Yuknis CM (2010) A grounded theory of deaf middle school students’ revision of their own writing. Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park

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

Miller J (2016) The Modern’s Progress. New York Times BR15

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Brashares 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Brashares 2010; Kirwan and Mudd 2012).

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

Two authors: (Kirwan and Mudd 2012)
Three or more authors: (Neuser et al. 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	TOP
Abbreviation	TOP
ISSN (print)	1134-5764
ISSN (online)	1863-8279
Scope	Discrete Mathematics and Combinatorics Statistics and Probability