How to format your references using the Fertility and Sterility citation style

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

Pain E. Science careers. Measuring the impact of invasive plants. Science 2008;320(5882):1516.

A journal article with 2 authors

Pörtner HO, Farrell AP. Ecology. Physiology and climate change. Science 2008;322(5902):690–2.

A journal article with 3 authors

DeBose JL, Lema SC, Nevitt GA. Dimethylsulfoniopropionate as a foraging cue for reef fishes. Science 2008;319(5868):1356.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Rösler C, Köck J, Malim MH, Blum HE, von Weizsäcker F. Comment on “Inhibition of hepatitis B virus replication by APOBEC3G.” Science 2004;305(5689):1403; author reply 1403.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hines M. Marketing implant dentistry. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc; 2015.

An edited book

Gibbs D, Zajda J, editors. Comparative Information Technology: Languages, Societies and the Internet. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2009.

A chapter in an edited book

van Helvoort AAJ. The Personal Knowledge Base Conception of Information Literacy. In: Kurbanoğlu S, Špiranec S, Grassian E, Mizrachi D, Catts R, editors. Information Literacy. Lifelong Learning and Digital Citizenship in the 21st Century: Second European Conference, ECIL 2014, Dubrovnik, Croatia, October 20-23, 2014. Proceedings. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2014. p. 31–6.

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 Fertility and Sterility.

Blog post

Andrew E. Male Black Widows Wreck Females’ Webs To Make Them Less Attractive [Internet]. IFLScience. 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30];Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/male-black-widows-wreck-females-webs-make-them-less-attractive/

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. Privatization of Federal Aviation Administration Functions. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1987.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Wahl RJ. Agustín Barrios and musical identity: Tangos in early twentieth-century guitar repertory. 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

Poniewozik J. When Leer Was King. New York Times. 2017;C1.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

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	Fertility and Sterility
Abbreviation	Fertil. Steril.
ISSN (print)	0015-0282
ISSN (online)	1556-5653
Scope	Obstetrics and Gynaecology Reproductive Medicine