How should I prepare the references in my manuscript?

Last updated on November 26, 2018

Check your journal's Guide for Authors to ensure you've met all the specific journal instructions relating to reference requirements, as well as other elements of submission and relevant submission items.

To find the Guide for Authors:

Navigate to the Journal’s Homepage.
- To find the Journal's Homepage, search for the journal using the search box under 'Find by journal title' on the Journal Author’s page .
Click on ‘Guide for Authors’ in the left hand menu.

The Guide for Authors will also tell you if the journal operates Your Paper Your Way, a submission process where there are no strict formatting requirements and references can be in any style or format, as long as the style is consistent. Every journal that offers YPYW clearly indicates this at the beginning of its Guide for Authors.

Reference templates

Most Elsevier journals have their reference template available in many of the most popular reference management software products. Authors only need to select the appropriate journal template when preparing their article, after which citations and bibliographies will be automatically formatted in the journal's style. Mendeley’s free reference manager services allow you to make your own fully-searchable library in seconds, cite as you write, and read and annotate your PDFs. Mendeley helps organize your papers, citations and references, accessing them in the cloud on any device, wherever you are. The journal’s Guide for Authors will contain a link from where users of Mendeley Desktop can easily install the reference style for the journal and then be able to select this style using the Mendeley plug-ins for Microsoft Word or LibreOffice. If you use reference management software, please ensure that you remove all field codes before submitting the electronic manuscript.

Click the sections below to view examples of the most popular reference styles:

List: references should be arranged first alphabetically and then further sorted chronologically if necessary. More than one reference from the same author(s) in the same year must be identified by the letters 'a', 'b', 'c', etc., placed after the year of publication.

Examples:

Reference to a journal publication: Van der Geer, J., Hanraads, J. A. J., & Lupton, R. A. (2010). The art of writing a scientific article. Journal of Scientific Communications, 163, 51–59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.Sc.2010.00372.

Reference to a journal publication with an article number: Van der Geer, J., Hanraads, J. A. J., & Lupton, R. A. (2018). The art of writing a scientific article. Heliyon, 19, e00205. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2018.e00205.

Reference to a book: Strunk, W., Jr., & White, E. B. (2000). The elements of style. (4th ed.). New York: Longman, (Chapter 4).

Reference to a chapter in an edited book: Mettam, G. R., & Adams, L. B. (2009). How to prepare an electronic version of your article. In B. S. Jones, & R. Z. Smith (Eds.), Introduction to the electronic age (pp. 281–304). New York: E-Publishing Inc.

Reference to a website: Cancer Research UK. Cancer statistics reports for the UK. (2003). http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/aboutcancer/statistics/cancerstatsreport/ Accessed 13 March 2003.

Reference to a dataset: [dataset] Oguro, M., Imahiro, S., Saito, S., Nakashizuka, T. (2015). Mortality data for Japanese oak wilt disease and surrounding forest compositions. Mendeley Data, v1. https://doi.org/10.17632/xwj98nb39r.1.

Reference to a conference paper or poster presentation: Engle, E.K., Cash, T.F., & Jarry, J.L. (2009, November). The Body Image Behaviours Inventory-3: Development and validation of the Body Image Compulsive Actions and Body Image Avoidance Scales. Poster session presentation at the meeting of the Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Therapies, New York, NY.

Journal abbreviations source

Journal names should be abbreviated according to the List of Title Word Abbreviations.

References cited in the text should conform to the following examples:

Mendoza (1990), Knebel and Mecke (1990) and Mendoza et al. (1990) or (Mendoza, 1990; Knebel and Mecke, 1990; Mendoza et al., 1990; Mecke, 1991).

All references cited in the text should be listed at the end of the paper as follows:

Single authors – list alphabetically and then chronologically.
Author and one co-author – list first alphabetically by co-author, and then chronologically.
First author and more than one co-author – list chronologically (not alpha-betically by the second author) because only the first author’s name and ”et al.” followed by the year publication will be used in the text.
In case that more than one paper by the same author(s) published in the same year is cited, the letters a, b, c, etc., should follow the year – e.g. Bargmann (1970a) – in both the text and the reference list.

References must include: authors (surname followed by initials), year of publication, complete title of article or chapter, name of journal or title of book, editors (if a book), volume number, name of publisher and place of publication (if a book), and first and last page numbers of article or chapter.

Examples:

Hollin, S.A., Drapkin, A.J., Wancier, J., Huang, Y.P., 1978. Mobile schwannoma of the cauda equina. J. Neurosurg. 48, 135–137.

Fujta, H., Imada, M., 1989. Three dimensional aspects on the functional morphology of the thyroid gland. In: Motta, P.M. (Ed.). Progress in Clinical and Biological Research, vol. 295. Cells and Tissue. A Three dimensional Approach by Modern Techniques in Microscopy. Alan R. Liss, New York, pp. 227–233.

Sternberger, L.A., 1986. Immunocytochemistry, third edition. Wiley, New York.

[dataset] Oguro, M., Imahiro, S., Saito, S., Nakashizuka, T., 2015. Mortality data for Japanese oak wilt disease and surrounding forest compositions. Mendeley Data, v1. http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/xwj98nb39r.1.

Articles "in press" may be cited in the reference list, but articles submitted or in preparation should not be included.

References should be cited in the text by numbers in brackets, in order of appearance and follow the the Vancouver Style. Only articles that have been published or are in press should be included in the references. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of references. Unpublished results or personal communications should be cited as such in the text. Please note the following examples:

[1] Hermann BP, Seidenberg M, Bell B, Woodard A, Rutecki P, Sheth R. Comorbid psychiatric symptoms in temporal lobe epilepsy: association with chronicity of epilepsy and impact on quality of life. Epilepsy Behav 2000;1:184-90.

[2] Paxinos G, Ashwell KWS, Tork I. Atlas of the developing rat nervous system. 2nd ed. San Diego: Academic Press; 1994.

[3] Shafer PO, Salmanson E. Psychosocial aspects of epilepsy. In: Schachter SC, Schomer DL, editors. The comprehensive evaluation and treatment of epilepsy: a practical guide. San Diego: Academic Press; 1997. p. 91-109.

Reference style

Text: Indicate references by number(s) in square brackets in line with the text. The actual authors can be referred to, but the reference number(s) must always be given.

List: Number the references (numbers in square brackets) in the list in the order in which they appear in the text.

Examples:

Reference to a journal publication:

[1] Van der Geer J, Hanraads JAJ, Lupton RA. The art of writing a scientific article. J Sci Commun 2010;163:51–9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.Sc.2010.00372.

Reference to a journal publication with an article number:

[2] Van der Geer J, Hanraads JAJ, Lupton RA. The art of writing a scientific article. Heliyon. 2018;19:e00205. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2018.e00205

Reference to a book:

[3] Strunk Jr W, White EB. The elements of style. 4th ed. New York: Longman; 2000.

Reference to a chapter in an edited book:

[4] Mettam GR, Adams LB. How to prepare an electronic version of your article. In: Jones BS, Smith RZ, editors. Introduction to the electronic age, New York: E-Publishing Inc; 2009, p. 281–304.

Reference to a website:

[5] Cancer Research UK. Cancer statistics reports for the UK, http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/aboutcancer/statistics/cancerstatsreport/; 2003 [accessed 13 March 2003].

Reference to a dataset:

[dataset] [6] Oguro M, Imahiro S, Saito S, Nakashizuka T. Mortality data for Japanese oak wilt disease and surrounding forest compositions, Mendeley Data, v1; 2015. https://doi.org/10.17632/xwj98nb39r.1.

Note shortened form for last page number. e.g., 51–9, and that for more than 6 authors the first 6 should be listed followed by 'et al.' For further details you are referred to 'Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts submitted to Biomedical Journals' (J Am Med Assoc 1997;277:927–34) (see also Samples of Formatted References.

Journal abbreviations source

Journal names should be abbreviated according to the List of Title Word Abbreviations.

How should I prepare the references in my manuscript?

Reference templates

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