How to format your references using the Check List citation style

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

Mann RS (2014) Neuroscience. The Michael Jackson fly. Science (New York, N.Y.) 344: 48–49.

A journal article with 2 authors

Clarke CF, Allan CM (2015) Biochemistry: Unexpected role for vitamin B2. Nature 522: 427–428.

A journal article with 3 authors

Dvorak M, Oswald W, Wu Z (2013) Bandgap opening by patterning graphene. Scientific reports 3: 2289.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Sun P, Zheng F, Zhu M, Wang K, Zhong M, Wu D, Zhu H (2014) Realizing synchronous energy harvesting and ion separation with graphene oxide membranes. Scientific reports 4: 5528.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Attwood D, Baybutt P, Devlin C, Fluharty W, Hughes G, Isaacson D, Joyner P, Lee E, Lorenzo D, Morrison L, Ormsby B (2006) Human Factors Methods for Improving Performance in the Process Industries. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Shetty NR, Prasad NH, Nalini N (Eds) (2015) Emerging Research in Computing, Information, Communication and Applications: ERCICA 2015, Volume 1. Springer India, New Delhi, XX, 580 p. 305 illus., 218 illus. in color pp.

A chapter in an edited book

Saraswat V (2014) Concurrent Constraint Programming Research Programmes – Redux. In: O’Sullivan B (Ed.), Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming: 20th International Conference, CP 2014, Lyon, France, September 8-12, 2014. Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer International Publishing, Cham, 6–8.

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 Check List.

Blog post

Andrew D (2016) Sexting Might Actually Be A Sign Of A Committed Relationship. IFLScience.

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) Aviation Competition: Effects on Consumers from Domestic Airline Alliances Vary. 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

Lee MY-L (2009) The intellectual origins of Lin Yutang’s cultural internationalism, 1928–1938. 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

Vecsey G (2010) Chase Is Over, But Pressure Is Still On. New York Times: B12.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Mann 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Mann 2014, Clarke and Allan 2015).

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

Two authors: (Clarke and Allan 2015)
Three or more authors: (Sun et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Check List
ISSN (online)	1809-127X
Scope