How to Cite and List References in a Scientific Paper

You have to list all the references to the literature cited in your paper at the end of it, under the “references” section. The list of references can either be classified in alphabetical order of the fist author’s last name, or in order of appearance, depending on the journal’s guidelines.
Here are some useful tips:

  • Do not label this section “Bibliography”, because a bibliography is usually composed from references that are read, but not necessarily cited in your manuscript. Bibliographies are common in books or literary works, but not in scientific papers. Instead, label the section “References”.
  • You have to use a specific citation format, and usually journals will explain in their guidelines which format you should use. If not, check past articles from the same journal and apply the formatting used in these papers to your own paper.
  • Check out carefully how to present the references in the reference list as well as how to cite the references in the text.
  • When citing references in the manuscript, do not copy and paste the phrases from another source directly, but paraphrase the information with your own original words. Right next to the inserted information, add the reference(s) either by including in parentheses the author’s last name followed by the year of publication (e.g. (Darnan et al., 2003)), either by inserting the number of the reference between brackets or parentheses (e.g. [3]).
  • When they are only two authors, give both authors’ last names (e.g. Smith and Thorn, 2001). For more than two authors, cite the first author’s last name followed by “et al.” and the year.
  • A list of various citations should be separated by semicolons (e.g. Poireau 2009; Smethen et al., 2010; Bremen et al., 1993).
  • If the same author(s) are cited for more than one paper having the same order of authors’ names, the papers should be listed in chronological sequence by year of publication.
  • If the same author(s) are cited for two or more papers published within the same year, place a small case letter after the year to denote the sequence in which you referred to them (e.g. Smith B, 1995a. Smith B, 1995b).
  • If no author is listed, use the word Anonymous instead of the author’s name.
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  • Mariona Giménez

    Thank you for your article. Even though I’ve already published three articles, reading that it is better to paraphrase the authors’ words was new for me. Please, write more articles like this one, where you explain how to do all those specific things.

 

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