How to format your references using the FlatChem citation style

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

[1]

J. Zaanen, Journal club. A theoretical physicist journeys to a hairy black hole’s horizon, Nature 462 (2009) 15.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

A. Shindo, J.B. Wallingford, PCP and septins compartmentalize cortical actomyosin to direct collective cell movement, Science 343 (2014) 649–652.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

R.L. Cook, P.J. Martin, J.M. Geremia, Optical coherent state discrimination using a closed-loop quantum measurement, Nature 446 (2007) 774–777.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

Y. Ura, J.M. Beierle, L.J. Leman, L.E. Orgel, M.R. Ghadiri, Self-assembling sequence-adaptive peptide nucleic acids, Science 325 (2009) 73–77.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

G.G. Matthews, Cellular Physiology of Nerve and Muscle, Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Malden, MA USA, 2002.

An edited book

[1]

M. Ali, R. Dapoigny, eds., Advances in Applied Artificial Intelligence: 19th International Conference on Industrial, Engineering and Other Applications of Applied Intelligent Systems, IEA/AIE 2006, Annecy, France, June 27-30, 2006. Proceedings, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2006.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

H. Schwarzwald, E.M. Collins, S. Gillespie, A.I.A. Spinks-Franklin, Long-term Outcomes for Children and Adolescents After International Adoption, in: E.M. Collins, S. Gillespie, A.I.A. Spinks-Franklin (Eds.), International Adoption and Clinical Practice, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2015: pp. 41–48.

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 FlatChem.

Blog post

[1]

J. Fang, Bird Parents Use “Baby Talk” To Help Chicks Learn Their Songs, IFLScience (2016).

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, A Second Launch Site for the Shuttle? An Analysis of Needs for the Nation’s Space Program, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1978.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

M.O. Igualada, The beliefs of advanced placement teachers regarding equity and access to advanced placement courses: A mixed-methods study, Doctoral dissertation, Florida Atlantic University, 2015.

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]

G.G. Gustines, A Bird? A Plane? La Borinqueña!, New York Times (2016) MB4.

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	FlatChem
Abbreviation	FlatChem
ISSN (print)	2452-2627
Scope