How to format your references using the Symmetry citation style

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

Robins, R.W. Psychology. The Nature of Personality: Genes, Culture, and National Character. Science 2005, 310, 62–63.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ramesh, K.V.; Goswami, P. Assessing Reliability of Regional Climate Projections: The Case of Indian Monsoon. Sci. Rep. 2014, 4, 4071.

A journal article with 3 authors

Matzke, M.; Matzke, A.J.; Kooter, J.M. RNA: Guiding Gene Silencing. Science 2001, 293, 1080–1083.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Jørgensen, H.F.; Chen, Z.-F.; Merkenschlager, M.; Fisher, A.G. Is REST Required for ESC Pluripotency? Nature 2009, 457, E4-5; discussion E7.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ginena, K.; Hamid, A. Foundations of Sharī‘ah Governance of Islamic Banks; John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: Chichester, UK, 2015; ISBN 9781119053507.

An edited book

New Challenges in Computational Collective Intelligence; Nguyen, N.T., Katarzyniak, R.P., Janiak, A., Eds.; Studies in Computational Intelligence; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2009; Vol. 244; ISBN 9783642039577.

A chapter in an edited book

Hagen, S.; Edwards, N.; Wilcock, L.; Kirschnick, J.; Rolia, J. One Is Not Enough: A Hybrid Approach for IT Change Planning. In Integrated Management of Systems, Services, Processes and People in IT: 20th IFIP/IEEE International Workshop on Distributed Systems: Operations and Management, DSOM 2009, Venice, Italy, October 27-28, 2009. Proceedings; Bartolini, C., Gaspary, L.P., Eds.; Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2009; pp. 56–70 ISBN 9783642049880.

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 Symmetry.

Blog post

Andrews, R. We Finally Know Why People Are Left- Or Right-Handed Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/brain/finally-know-people-left-righthanded/ (accessed on 30 October 2018).

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 Federal Procurements: Comments on Proposed Legislation Affecting Federal Procurements; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1992;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Alalshaikh, S.A. Leadership Styles in Saudi Arabian Universities: Comparison Based on Educational Background. Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University: Malibu, CA, 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

Burghardt, L.F. Stories From the Battlefield Inspire a Teacher’s World War II Novel. New York Times 2005, 14LI10.

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	Symmetry
Abbreviation	Symmetry (Basel)
ISSN (online)	2073-8994
Scope	Chemistry (miscellaneous) Computer Science (miscellaneous) General Mathematics Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)