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

Elert E (2013) Calling cells to arms. Nature 504:S2-3

A journal article with 2 authors

Stoeckle MY, Coffran C (2013) TreeParser-aided Klee diagrams display taxonomic clusters in DNA barcode and nuclear gene datasets. Sci Rep 3:2635

A journal article with 3 authors

Kuba H, Oichi Y, Ohmori H (2010) Presynaptic activity regulates Na(+) channel distribution at the axon initial segment. Nature 465:1075–1078

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Cohen-Armon M, Visochek L, Katzoff A, et al (2004) Long-term memory requires polyADP-ribosylation. Science 304:1820–1822

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Glisic SG (2011) Advanced Wireless Communications & Internet. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Zažímalová E, Petrášek J, Benková E (eds) (2014) Auxin and Its Role in Plant Development. Springer, Vienna

A chapter in an edited book

Teodor V, Cucu M, Oancea N (2009) The Worm Cutter Tool Profiling Based on Discreet Surfaces Representation. In: Mastorakis N, Mladenov V, Kontargyri VT (eds) Proceedings of the European Computing Conference: Volume 2. Springer US, Boston, MA, pp 49–62

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

Andrews R (2017) Solar Power Will Completely Phase Out Coal By 2050. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/solar-power-completely-phase-out-coal-2050/. 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 (1999) Financial Management: Briefing on the Federal Aviation Administration Property, Plant, and Equipment Accountability Review. 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

Talice KW (2017) An Assessment of Veterans Affairs Healthcare Leadership Competencies. Doctoral dissertation, Capella University

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

de la MERCED MJ, Strand O (2017) Nestlé Goes High End, Buying Blue Bottle Coffee. New York Times B1

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Elert 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Stoeckle and Coffran 2013; Elert 2013).

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

Two authors: (Stoeckle and Coffran 2013)
Three or more authors: (Cohen-Armon et al. 2004)

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

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