How to format your references using the Science Bulletin citation style

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

[1]

Hellemans A. Beating the European brain drain. Nature 2001;414:4–5.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Miller PS, Aricescu AR. Crystal structure of a human GABAA receptor. Nature 2014;512:270–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Gregoire LJ, Payne AJ, Valdes PJ. Deglacial rapid sea level rises caused by ice-sheet saddle collapses. Nature 2012;487:219–22.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Willert K, Brown JD, Danenberg E, Duncan AW, Weissman IL, Reya T, et al. Wnt proteins are lipid-modified and can act as stem cell growth factors. Nature 2003;423:448–52.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Neupert R. French Animation History. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell; 2011.

An edited book

[1]

Sharma SK. Light Scattering by Optically Soft Particles: Theory and Applications. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2006.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Miura N, Sakurai T, Kuroda T. Inductive Coupled Communications. In: Ho R, Drost R, editors. Coupled Data Communication Techniques for High-Performance and Low-Power Computing, Boston, MA: Springer US; 2010, p. 79–125.

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 Science Bulletin.

Blog post

[1]

Hale T. Google’s AI Has Secretly Been Giving Online “Go” Players An Ass-Kicking. IFLScience 2017.

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

[1]

Government Accountability Office. Intercollegiate Athletics: Recent Trends in Teams and Participants in National Collegiate Athletic Association Sports. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2007.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Fonfa SL. The impact of increased security on the employment options and lives of people with severe disabilities. Doctoral dissertation. Capella University, 2008.

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

[1]

McKINLEY JC Jr. Top Judge Goes Where Flaws Are Acute to Address State of Courts. New York Times 2017:A20.

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	Science Bulletin
Abbreviation	Sci. Bull. (Beijing)
ISSN (print)	2095-9273
Scope	Multidisciplinary