Formatting citations and references to match journal style

A disgruntled author once confronted me, armed with a copy of his rejected  manuscript and a recent issue of the journal that had summarily rejected the manuscript because the references failed to conform to the style of the journal. “Here, take a look    ! The formatting is the same in both,” said the author. I looked at both and pointed out that whereas the journal had separated the initials of authors with a dot and a space (Crick F. H. C.), the author had used neither (Crick FHC), and whereas the journal has chosen to end each reference with a dot, the author had skipped it. Well, I cannot reproduce the expletives he used—but you get the idea.

Some journals are picky about the minutiae of formatting citations and references: one journal declares upfront that “manuscripts will be returned even without reviewing if reference style is not adhered to.” It is therefore in authors’ interest to get this part right, and this post shows how to. The first part deals with citations (pointers embedded in text) and the second, with the list of references that appears at the end of manuscript.

Formatting citations

Numbered citations. Also sometimes referred to as the Vancouver style, the citations are simply numbers. However, you need to pay attention to the following peculiarities if you want to get the formatting right.
• Vertical position. Is the number a superscript or positioned normally (as in ² or 2, for example)?
• Placement. Does the number appear after the period (or after a comma if the number occurs within a sentence) or before?
• Enclosure. Is the number enclosed in parentheses or in square brackets or not enclosed in any way?
• Posture. Does the number appear in italics or in roman (the normal, upright form)?

Author(s)–date citations. Also sometimes referred to as the Harvard style, the citations comprise the last name(s) of author(s) followed by the year of publication, as in ‘Watson and Crick, 1953’ or, if the authors are many, as in ‘Florey et al., 1946’. The points of style that need attention are the following.

Intervening punctuation. Is the year separated from the names with a comma or with a space?
Number of authors. Is ‘et al.’ used when the number of authors is more than 2 or more than 3 or more than some other arbitrary threshold?
Posture. Is the expression ‘et al.’ in italics or roman (et al. or et al.)?
Sequence of grouped citations. When multiple citations are grouped, are they given in alphabetic order of the authors or in chronological order or even in reverse chronological order (with the latest reference given first)?

Formatting references

If citations, though short and simple, have their peculiar formatting styles, references, which are long and complex, offer an even more fertile ground. To make the task simpler, break it down into four parts, as shown here.
• Elements included. Some journals dispense with the title of the articles, and some use the minimum digits for page numbers, as in ‘123–9’ instead of ‘123–129’.
• Sequence of elements. Is the year given immediately after the names of authors or moved closer to the volume number of the journal or placed at the end?

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• Case. Are names of journals and books given in title case or sentence case (Physical Review Letters or Physical review letters, for example)? What about titles of articles?
• Punctuation. Journals often depart from the normal conventions of punctuation [1] in punctuating references and even prefer to end each reference with a period. In the humanities, it is customary to place the titles of articles in quotation marks. Note the punctuation for the initials of authors: are they separated with dots, with space, with both, or with neither (Crick H.F.S. or Crick H F S or Crick H. F. S. or Crick HFS, for example)?
• Typography. Italics are commonly used for titles of journals and of books, and volume numbers of journals are often in bold.

Now that you know what to look for, it should be easy enough for you to ‘parse’ a list of references as given in your target journal and then reproduce the formatting exactly. Remember that by conforming exactly to the journal’s style, you are sending a subtle signal to its editors that you have prepared the manuscript specifically for that journal and are not merely recycling a rejected manuscript—and that may just tilt the balance in favour of your manuscript getting sent out for review and not summarily rejected.

Reference

[1] Joshi Y. 2021. Restoring sanity into punctuation of references. Science Editor 44: 46–47. [DOI: 10.36591/SE-D-4402-46 ]