How to format your references using the Proceedings of the Royal Society A citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Proceedings of the Royal Society A. 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	Download the output style file
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

Wang Q. 2013 China’s citizens must act to save their environment. Nature 497, 159.

A journal article with 2 authors

Wang Y, Hekimi S. 2015 Mitochondrial dysfunction and longevity in animals: Untangling the knot. Science 350, 1204–1207.

A journal article with 3 authors

Conway SL, Shinbrot T, Glasser BJ. 2004 A Taylor vortex analogy in granular flows. Nature 431, 433–437.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Takahashi T, Sutherland SC, Feely RA, Cosca CE. 2003 Decadal variation of the surface water PCO2 in the western and central equatorial Pacific. Science 302, 852–856.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Spector P. 2016 Understanding Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Akiyama J. 2015 Treks into Intuitive Geometry: The World of Polygons and Polyhedra. Tokyo: Springer Japan.

A chapter in an edited book

Marreiros G, Santos R, Ramos C. 2010 GLSS – Group Learning in Shared Spaces Considering Aspects Like Emotion and Personality. In Ambient Intelligence and Future Trends-International Symposium on Ambient Intelligence (ISAmI 2010) (eds JC Augusto, JM Corchado, P Novais, C Analide), pp. 37–44. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

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 Proceedings of the Royal Society A.

Blog post

Hale T. 2016 Here’s How To Beat The Queues At The Supermarket Checkout. IFLScience.

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. 1997 Student Financial Aid Systems: Absence of Guiding Architecture Reduces Efficiency, Ease of Use.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Prejean KD. 2015 An Analysis of Corporal Punishment Practices in Texas Public Schools: Race, School District Size, Academic Performance, and Policy Influences. Doctoral dissertation, University of Louisiana, Lafayette, LA.

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

Crow K. 2002 A Prickly Mason-Dixon Line in the Village. New York Times, 3 November. , 146.

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	Proceedings of the Royal Society A
Abbreviation	Proc. Math. Phys. Eng. Sci.
ISSN (print)	1364-5021
ISSN (online)	1471-2946
Scope	General Engineering General Mathematics General Physics and Astronomy