How to format your references using the Statistics and Probability Letters citation style

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

Yan, H., 2004. Materials science. Nucleic acid nanotechnology. Science 306, 2048–2049.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hijri, M., Sanders, I.R., 2005. Low gene copy number shows that arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi inherit genetically different nuclei. Nature 433, 160–163.

A journal article with 3 authors

Elioff, M.S., Valentini, J.J., Chandler, D.W., 2003. Subkelvin cooling NO molecules via “billiard-like” collisions with argon. Science 302, 1940–1943.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Narayanan, K., Yen, S.K., Dou, Q., Padmanabhan, P., Sudhaharan, T., Ahmed, S., Ying, J.Y., Selvan, S.T., 2013. Mimicking cellular transport mechanism in stem cells through endosomal escape of new peptide-coated quantum dots. Sci. Rep. 3, 2184.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Molino Sr., L.N., 2006. Emergency Incident Management Systems. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Kleidt, B. (Ed.), 2006. The Use of Hybrid Securities. DUV, Wiesbaden.

A chapter in an edited book

Dana, R.H., Allen, J., 2009. Transitions Integrating Research and Practice, in: Dana, R.H., Allen, J. (Eds.), Cultural Competency Training in a Global Society, International and Cultural Psychology. Springer, New York, NY, pp. 67–78.

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 Statistics and Probability Letters.

Blog post

Andrew, E., 2013. Mushrooms Capable of Generating Wind to Distribute Spores [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/mushrooms-capable-generating-wind-distribute-spores/ (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, 1971. Assessment of the Teacher Corps Program at the University of Southern California and Participating Schools in Tulare County Serving Rural-Migrant Children (No. B-164031(1)). 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

Panteleyeva, N.B., 2010. Statistical methods of latent structure discovery in child-directed speech (Doctoral dissertation). Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.

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. ‘Wow’: Stunned Cable News Hosts Reacted in Real Time to Trump. New York Times B2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Yan, 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Hijri and Sanders, 2005; Yan, 2004).

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

Two authors: (Hijri and Sanders, 2005)
Three or more authors: (Narayanan et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Statistics and Probability Letters
Abbreviation	Stat. Probab. Lett.
ISSN (print)	0167-7152
Scope	Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty Statistics and Probability