How to format your references using the Decision citation style

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

Goodman, S. (2001). Battle to save beleaguered beluga. Nature, 412(6843), 108.

A journal article with 2 authors

Elser, J., & Bennett, E. (2011). Phosphorus cycle: A broken biogeochemical cycle. Nature, 478(7367), 29–31.

A journal article with 3 authors

Stott, P. A., Stone, D. A., & Allen, M. R. (2004). Human contribution to the European heatwave of 2003. Nature, 432(7017), 610–614.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Chang, T.-R., Lin, H., Jeng, H.-T., & Bansil, A. (2014). Thickness dependence of spin polarization and electronic structure of ultra-thin films of MoS2 and related transition-metal dichalcogenides. Scientific Reports, 4, 6270.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Gordon, A., & Hernandez, S. (2016). The Official (ISC) 2® Guide to the SSCP 2® CBK 2®. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Weisburd, D., Feucht, T., Hakimi, I., Mock, L., & Perry, S. (Eds.). (2011). To Protect and To Serve: Policing in an Age of Terrorism. Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Fernandes, C., Sarmento, M., & Matias, A. (2013). Evaluation of the Interrailers’ Satisfaction Regarding the Tourism Services and Activities in Italy, Greece and Croatia. In Á. Matias, P. Nijkamp, & M. Sarmento (Eds.), Quantitative Methods in Tourism Economics (pp. 59–77). Physica-Verlag HD.

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 Decision.

Blog post

O`Callaghan, J. (2017, June 5). Failed Star Found In Our Solar Neighborhood By Citizen Scientists. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/failed-star-found-in-our-solar-neighborhood-by-citizen-scientists/

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. (1991). Project on Standardization of Basic Financial Information Requirements of Central Agencies (156239). U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Poudyal Kharel, A. (2015). Pyrolysis Studies of Copper and Copper Phosphate Mixtures on a Tungsten Surface [Doctoral dissertation]. Southern Illinois 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

Dominus, S. (2017, October 18). When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy. New York Times, MM29.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Goodman, 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Elser & Bennett, 2011; Goodman, 2001).

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

Two authors: (Elser & Bennett, 2011)
Three or more authors: (Chang et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Decision
Abbreviation	Decision (Wash., DC)
ISSN (print)	2325-9965
ISSN (online)	2325-9973
Scope