How to format your references using the Cancer Letters citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Cancer Letters. 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

[1]

R.A. Weiss, Gulliver’s travels in HIVland, Nature 410 (2001) 963–967.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

R.C. Ewing, F.N. von Hippel, Energy. Nuclear waste management in the United States--starting over, Science 325 (2009) 151–152.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

N. Shubin, C. Tabin, S. Carroll, Deep homology and the origins of evolutionary novelty, Nature 457 (2009) 818–823.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

O. Dellis, S.G. Dedos, S.C. Tovey, Taufiq-Ur-Rahman, S.J. Dubel, C.W. Taylor, Ca2+ entry through plasma membrane IP3 receptors, Science 313 (2006) 229–233.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

T. Neward, A.C. Erickson, T. Crowell, R. Minerich, Professional F# 2.0, Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, IN, USA, 2010.

An edited book

[1]

J.L. Weaver, Pro JavaFX 2: A Definitive Guide to Rich Clients with Java Technology, Apress, Berkeley, CA, 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

S.W. Ambler, Tailoring Usability into Agile Software Development Projects, in: E.L.-C. Law, E.T. Hvannberg, G. Cockton (Eds.), Maturing Usability: Quality in Software, Interaction and Value, Springer, London, 2008: pp. 75–95.

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 Cancer Letters.

Blog post

[1]

S. Luntz, Sibling Rivalry Is A Weighty Issue For Meerkats, IFLScience (2016). https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/sibling-rivalry-weighty-issue-meerkats/ (accessed October 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

[1]

Government Accountability Office, Inquiry About the Research Grant To Develop a Portable Computer To Record Traffic Information for Verifying the Accuracy of Charges for Telecommunications Service, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1974.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

A.C. Johnson, The lived experience of the adult African American female who has lived in multiple foster care placements, Doctoral dissertation, Capella University, 2012.

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

[1]

B. Brantley, Witches of Salem Are Back; You May Be One, New York Times (2016) C1.

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	Cancer Letters
Abbreviation	Cancer Lett.
ISSN (print)	0304-3835
Scope	Cancer Research Oncology