How to format your references using the Perspectives in Science citation style

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

Macilwain, C., 2010. World view: Wild goose chase. Nature 463, 291.

A journal article with 2 authors

Menon, A.K., Levine, T.P., 2015. Cell biology: Countercurrents in lipid flow. Nature 525, 191–192.

A journal article with 3 authors

Taylor, M.W., Thacker, R.W., Hentschel, U., 2007. Genetics. Evolutionary insights from sponges. Science 316, 1854–1855.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Dessaud, E., Yang, L.L., Hill, K., Cox, B., Ulloa, F., Ribeiro, A., Mynett, A., Novitch, B.G., Briscoe, J., 2007. Interpretation of the sonic hedgehog morphogen gradient by a temporal adaptation mechanism. Nature 450, 717–720.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Woolson, R.F., Clarke, W.R., 2002. Statistical Methods for the Analysis of Biomedical Data: Woolson/Statistical, Wiley Series in Probability and Statistics. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Habu, J., Fawcett, C., Matsunaga, J.M. (Eds.), 2008. Evaluating Multiple Narratives: Beyond Nationalist, Colonialist, Imperialist Archaeologies. Springer, New York, NY.

A chapter in an edited book

Martinez, Y.R., Rodriguez, H.B., Lozano, D.O., Alcázar, G.A.P., Paz, J.C., 2009. Magnetic and structural properties of mechanically alloyed Tb0.257−x Nd x Fe0.743 alloys, with x = 0 and 0.257, in: Larica, C., Mercader, R.C., Partiti, C., Gancedo, J.R. (Eds.), LACAME 2006: Proceedings of the 10th Latin American Conference on the Applications of the Mössbauer Effect (LACAME 2006) Held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 5–9 November 2006. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 29–34.

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 Perspectives in Science.

Blog post

Hale, T., 2017. Investigation Gives Glimpse Into The Scale Of The Shark Fin Trade [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/investigation-gives-glimpse-into-the-scale-of-the-shark-fin-trade/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 2002. Human Services Integration: Results of a GAO Cosponsored Conference on Modernizing Information Systems (No. GAO-02-121). U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Arguello, I.M., 2010. Circle of Sisters summer program: A grant-writing project (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Vecsey, G., 2012. The Old Guard Welcomes The New Guard. New York Times B10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Macilwain, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Macilwain, 2010; Menon and Levine, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Menon and Levine, 2015)
Three or more authors: (Dessaud et al., 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	Perspectives in Science
Abbreviation	Perspect. Sci. (Neth)
ISSN (print)	2213-0209
Scope