How to format your references using the NursingPlus Open citation style

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

Penrose, O. (2005). An asymmetric world. Nature, 438(7070), 919.

A journal article with 2 authors

Winograd, I. J., & Roseboom, E. H., Jr. (2008). Nuclear waste. Yucca Mountain revisited. Science (New York, N.Y.), 320(5882), 1426–1427.

A journal article with 3 authors

Parvanov, E. D., Petkov, P. M., & Paigen, K. (2010). Prdm9 controls activation of mammalian recombination hotspots. Science (New York, N.Y.), 327(5967), 835.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Rafael, M. E., Taylor, T., Magill, A., Lim, Y.-W., Girosi, F., & Allan, R. (2006). Reducing the burden of childhood malaria in Africa: the role of improved. Nature, 444 Suppl 1, 39–48.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Curtis, P. M. (2011). Maintaining Mission Critical Systems in a 24/7 Environment. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Markopoulos, P., Martens, J.-B., Malins, J., Coninx, K., & Liapis, A. (Eds.). (2016). Collaboration in Creative Design: Methods and Tools. Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Madonna, R. (2016). Tissue Specific Progenitors/Stem Cells for Cardiac Regeneration. In R. Madonna (Ed.), Stem Cells and Cardiac Regeneration (pp. 45–54). Springer International Publishing.

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 NursingPlus Open.

Blog post

Luntz, S. (2014, June 5). New Camera Examines Sauron’s Eye. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/new-camera-examines-saurons-eye/

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. (2014). Federal Student Loans: Oversight of Defaulted Loan Rehabilitation Needs Strengthening (GAO-14-426T). 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

Williams, V. D. (2014). Leadership behavior practice patterns’ relationship to employee work engagement in a nonprofit that supports the homeless [Doctoral dissertation]. Pepperdine 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

Brantley, B. (2016, October 14). This Means Something, as Well as Something Else. New York Times, C1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Penrose, 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Penrose, 2005; Winograd & Roseboom, 2008).

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

Two authors: (Winograd & Roseboom, 2008)
Three or more authors: (Rafael et al., 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	NursingPlus Open
Abbreviation	NursingPlus Open
ISSN (print)	2352-9008
Scope