How to format your references using the NFS Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for NFS Journal. 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. Bohannon, The Gonzo Scientist. Flunking Spore, Science 322 (2008) 531.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

C. Pujolle-Robic, L. Noirez, Observation of shear-induced nematic-isotropic transition in side-chain liquid crystal polymers, Nature 409 (2001) 167–171.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

B. Butterworth, S. Varma, D. Laurillard, Dyscalculia: from brain to education, Science 332 (2011) 1049–1053.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

A. Sigal, R. Milo, A. Cohen, N. Geva-Zatorsky, Y. Klein, Y. Liron, N. Rosenfeld, T. Danon, N. Perzov, U. Alon, Variability and memory of protein levels in human cells, Nature 444 (2006) 643–646.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

M. Carter, S.P. Bentley, Soil Properties and their Correlations, John Wiley &;#38; Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2016.

An edited book

[1]

A. Knüpfer, T. Hilbrich, C. Niethammer, J. Gracia, W.E. Nagel, M.M. Resch, eds., Tools for High Performance Computing 2015: Proceedings of the 9th International Workshop on Parallel Tools for High Performance Computing, September 2015, Dresden, Germany, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

M. Jantscher, R. Ghosal, A. Grasso, P.H. Cole, A Security Primer, in: P.H. Cole, D.C. Ranasinghe (Eds.), Networked RFID Systems and Lightweight Cryptography: Raising Barriers to Product Counterfeiting, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2008: pp. 79–98.

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 NFS Journal.

Blog post

[1]

A. Carpineti, The Real-Life Planets And Moons That Resemble Worlds In “Star Wars,” IFLScience (2016). https://www.iflscience.com/space/real-star-wars-planets-according-nasa/ (accessed October 30, 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

[1]

Government Accountability Office, Aviation and the Environment: NextGen and Research and Development Are Keys to Reducing Emissions and Their Impact on Health and Climate, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2008.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

J. Fregoso, Through the pipeline: Degree aspirations of African American and Latino males enrolled in California community colleges, Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 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, Two Graphic Narratives, Inspired by the Fab Four, New York Times (2014) C6.

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	NFS Journal
ISSN (print)	2352-3646
Scope