How to format your references using the Topics in Current Chemistry citation style

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

Tranquada JM (2012) Physics. Cuprates get orders to charge. Science 337:811–812

A journal article with 2 authors

Xiang Y, Kobilka BK (2003) Myocyte adrenoceptor signaling pathways. Science 300:1530–1532

A journal article with 3 authors

Holmes EA, Craske MG, Graybiel AM (2014) Psychological treatments: A call for mental-health science. Nature 511:287–289

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Searchinger T, Heimlich R, Houghton RA, et al (2008) Use of U.S. croplands for biofuels increases greenhouse gases through emissions from land-use change. Science 319:1238–1240

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Pesavento L, Smoleny S (2015) A Trader’s Guide to Financial Astrology. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Mussida C, Pastore F (2015) Geographical Labor Market Imbalances: Recent Explanations and Cures. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Itterheim S, Löw A (2011) Your First Game. In: Löw A (ed) Learn cocos2D Game Development with iOS 5. Apress, Berkeley, CA, pp 81–113

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 Topics in Current Chemistry.

Blog post

Taub B (2016) 2,000-Year-Old Human Skeleton Found On Antikythera Shipwreck. In: IFLScience. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (1988) Degradable Plastics: Standards, Research and Development. 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

Stockman SB (2015) Daughters of Yahweh: Recovering the deep feminine from the Yahweh complex. Doctoral dissertation, Pacifica Graduate Institute

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

Detrick B (2017) The Lot Radio. New York Times D6

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	Topics in Current Chemistry
Abbreviation	Top. Curr. Chem. (J)
ISSN (print)	2365-0869
ISSN (online)	2364-8961
Scope