How to format your references using the Positivity citation style

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

McMullen, K.: Experimental physics, experimental art. Nature. 434, 310–311 (2005)

A journal article with 2 authors

Pyle, J., Harris, N.: Joe Farman (1930-2013). Nature. 498, 435 (2013)

A journal article with 3 authors

Corominas-Murtra, B., Fortuny, J., Solé, R.V.: Towards a mathematical theory of meaningful communication. Sci. Rep. 4, 4587 (2014)

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Zang, J., Cao, C., Feng, Y., Liu, J., Zhao, X.: Stretchable and high-performance supercapacitors with crumpled graphene papers. Sci. Rep. 4, 6492 (2014)

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Qiuwei Wu: Grid Integration of Electric Vehicles in Open Electricity Markets. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Oxford, UK (2013)

An edited book

Abdinia, S.: Design of Organic Complementary Circuits and Systems on Foil. Springer International Publishing, Cham (2015)

A chapter in an edited book

Karchevskii, E., Spiridonov, A., Beilina, L.: Determination of Permittivity from Propagation Constant Measurements in Optical Fibers. In: Beilina, L. (ed.) Inverse Problems and Applications. pp. 55–65. Springer International Publishing, Cham (2015)

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 Positivity.

Blog post

Andrew, E.: Failure In Real Science Is Good – And Different From Phony Controversies, https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/failure-real-science-good-and-different-phony-controversies/

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: The Summer Feeding Program for Children: Reforms Begun--Many More Urgently Needed. 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

Stuehling, A.L.: “We Speak ‘Hola’ In School”: A Case Study of Global Education in a Partial-Immersion Spanish Preschool, (2017)

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

Branch, J., Kovaleski, S.F., Tavernise, S.: Gunman Methodically Chased Gambling’s Highs, (2017)

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	Positivity
Abbreviation	Positivity
ISSN (print)	1385-1292
ISSN (online)	1572-9281
Scope	General Mathematics Analysis Theoretical Computer Science