How to format your references using the Topics in Current Chemistry citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Topics in Current Chemistry. 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	Download the output style file
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

Kondro W (2000) CANADIAN UNIVERSITIES: Funding of 2000 Slots Sets Off Musical Chairs. Science 288:2112

A journal article with 2 authors

Denicourt C, Dowdy SF (2004) Medicine. Targeting apoptotic pathways in cancer cells. Science 305:1411–1413

A journal article with 3 authors

Hristov TS, Miller SD, Friehe CA (2003) Dynamical coupling of wind and ocean waves through wave-induced air flow. Nature 422:55–58

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Han Q, Hsieh Y-T, Meng L, et al (2018) High-performance perovskite/Cu(In,Ga)Se2 monolithic tandem solar cells. Science 361:904–908

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Pardoe I (2006) Applied Regression Modeling. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Hairer E, Wanner G (2008) Analysis by Its History. Springer, New York, NY

A chapter in an edited book

Sappington TW (2014) Emerging issues in Integrated Pest Management Implementation and Adoption in the North Central USA. In: Peshin R, Pimentel D (eds) Integrated Pest Management: Experiences with Implementation, Global Overview, Vol.4. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp 65–97

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 Topics in Current Chemistry.

Blog post

Taub B (2016) Humans May Have Already Reached Their Maximum Lifespan. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/humans-may-already-reached-maximum-lifespan/. 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 (2004) Intellectual Property: Economic Arrangements Among Small Webcasters and Third Parties and Their Effect on Royalties. 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

Kargbo AH (2019) An Approach to Dynamic Resource Allocation for Electric Power Disaster Response Management. Doctoral dissertation, George Washington 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

Baker P, Vogel KP (2017) Lawyers Clash Over Strategy By West Wing. New York Times A1

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

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	Topics in Current Chemistry
Abbreviation	Top. Curr. Chem. (J)
ISSN (print)	2365-0869
ISSN (online)	2364-8961
Scope