How to format your references using the Cancers citation style

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

Lazic, S.E. Comment on “Stress in Puberty Unmasks Latent Neuropathological Consequences of Prenatal Immune Activation in Mice.” Science 2013, 340, 811.

A journal article with 2 authors

Yuan, F.; Huang, L. Brittle to Ductile Transition in Densified Silica Glass. Sci. Rep. 2014, 4, 5035.

A journal article with 3 authors

Fang, Y.; Seong, N.-H.; Dlott, D.D. Measurement of the Distribution of Site Enhancements in Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering. Science 2008, 321, 388–392.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Walther, D.J.; Peter, J.-U.; Bashammakh, S.; Hörtnagl, H.; Voits, M.; Fink, H.; Bader, M. Synthesis of Serotonin by a Second Tryptophan Hydroxylase Isoform. Science 2003, 299, 76.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Stokes, D.J. Principles and Practice of Variable Pressure/Environmental Scanning Electron Microscopy (VP-ESEM); John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: Chichester, UK, 2008; ISBN 9780470758731.

An edited book

Interpolation, Schur Functions and Moment Problems; Alpay, D., Gohberg, I., Eds.; Operator Theory: Advances and Applications, Linear Operators and Linear Systems; Birkhäuser: Basel, 2006; Vol. 165; ISBN 9783764375461.

A chapter in an edited book

Turner, M.E.; Fireman, M. Evaluating the Biopsychosocial Milieu of Chronic Pain. In Treating Comorbid Opioid Use Disorder in Chronic Pain; Matthews, A.M., Fellers, J.C., Eds.; Springer International Publishing: Cham, 2016; pp. 35–45 ISBN 9783319298610.

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 Cancers.

Blog post

Davis, J. EPA Accidentally Contaminates River With Millions Of Gallons Of Toxic Waste Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/environment/epa-accidentally-contaminate-animas-river-millions-gallons-toxic-waste/ (accessed on 30 October 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 Information Systems: Agencies Overlook Security Controls During Development; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1988;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Jackson, M. Creating Community in a Dual Immersion Program: A Grant Writing Project. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach: Long Beach, CA, 2013.

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

Feeney, K. Pirogi, Too Fresh to Be Missed. New York Times 2006, NJ6.

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	Cancers
Abbreviation	Cancers (Basel)
ISSN (online)	2072-6694
Scope	Cancer Research Oncology