How to format your references using the Research Policy citation style

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

Dudukovic, M.P., 2009. Frontiers in reactor engineering. Science 325, 698–701.

A journal article with 2 authors

Michalski, J.R., Bleacher, J.E., 2013. Supervolcanoes within an ancient volcanic province in Arabia Terra, Mars. Nature 502, 47–52.

A journal article with 3 authors

Birbeck, G.L., Meyer, A.-C., Ogunniyi, A., 2015. Nervous system disorders across the life course in resource-limited settings. Nature 527, S167-71.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Winkler, P.M., Steiner, G., Vrtala, A., Vehkamäki, H., Noppel, M., Lehtinen, K.E.J., Reischl, G.P., Wagner, P.E., Kulmala, M., 2008. Heterogeneous nucleation experiments bridging the scale from molecular ion clusters to nanoparticles. Science 319, 1374–1377.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Tatham, M., Morton, K., 2006. Developments in Speech Synthesis. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Lantada, A.D. (Ed.), 2013. Handbook on Advanced Design and Manufacturing Technologies for Biomedical Devices. Springer US, Boston, MA.

A chapter in an edited book

Winter, H., 2007. Kinetic Electron Emission for Grazing Scattering of Atoms and Ions from Surfaces, in: Burgdörfer, J. (Ed.), Slow Heavy-Particle Induced Electron Emission from Solid Surfaces, Springer Tracts in Modern Physics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 113–151.

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 Research Policy.

Blog post

Andrew, E., 2015. Schrödinger’s Cat Gets A Reality Check [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL (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, 1999. Highway Safety: Effectiveness of State .08 Blood Alcohol Laws (No. RCED-99-179). 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

Felarca, C.U., 2012. A burning problem: Skin protection practices among college nursing students and non-nursing college students (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

Grynbaum, M.M., 2017. A Costly Retraction for CNN And an Opening for Trump. New York Times B1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Dudukovic, 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Dudukovic, 2009; Michalski and Bleacher, 2013).

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

Two authors: (Michalski and Bleacher, 2013)
Three or more authors: (Winkler et al., 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	Research Policy
Abbreviation	Res. Policy
ISSN (print)	0048-7333
Scope	Management of Technology and Innovation Strategy and Management Management Science and Operations Research