How to Cite Your References
Please use these notes as a guide to formatting your references!
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Please use these notes as a guide to formatting your references!
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Science for the People uses Chicago Notes style for our references. Please do your best to follow these guidelines. The editors will go through to fix small errors in citations, but if they have to compose references from scratch or transform one style into another for every reference, the article will be sent back to the author for revision.
Footnotes should be used for references, and for providing additional notes to supplement the main text. Please make sure to use the footnote feature in your word processing program. DO NOT manually create a superscript number with a corresponding note at the end. Footnotes should appear only at the end of sentences, after the punctuation (see section on "multiple citations in one reference" section below)
The footnotes should be in the following formats. These are taken directly from the Chicago Manual of Style’s Quick Guide. Note that for each example, there is a long version (for the first time the source is cited) and a short version (for all subsequent times). We do not use "op. cit." or "ibid."
A few other quick points:
Science for the People magazine is not an academic journal, so it is not necessary to include an abundance of citations to "back up" all of your statements. Additionally, printing is costly, and space is limited, so we recommend avoiding the inclusion of citations that aren't essential. All factual statements will be reviewed in fact checking, and if additional references are necessary, either the lead and co-editor or technical editor will suggest them. Please only include citations if they are necessary. If your article does have a large number of references, it is likely that our editors will suggest cutting them down to only those that are pertinent to the text.
In general, try to avoid adding a large number of footnotes with additional information to the main text, and instead try to work them into the text. If you have to use a footnote, put it at the end of a sentence, even if there means multiple references in one footnote.
All titles should be in title case, not sentence case. Ex. Science for the People, not Science for the people.
With four or more authors, cite only the first author followed by et al.
Andrew S. Levey et al., “A More Accurate Method to Estimate Glomerular Filtration Rate from Serum Creatinine: A New Prediction Equation,” Annals of Internal Medicine 130, no. 6 (March 16, 1999): 461-470, .
1. Zadie Smith, Swing Time (New York: Penguin Press, 2016), 315–16.
2. Brian Grazer and Charles Fishman, A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015), 12.
3. Smith, Swing Time, 320.
4. Grazer and Fishman, Curious Mind, 37.
In the endnote, cite specific pages.
1. Henry David Thoreau, “Walking,” in The Making of the American Essay, ed. John D’Agata (Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2016), 177–78.
2. Thoreau, “Walking,” 182.
In a note, cite specific page numbers. For articles consulted online, include a URL or the name of the database. Many journal articles list a DOI (Digital Object Identifier). A DOI forms a permanent URL that begins https://doi.org/. This URL is preferable to the URL that appears in your browser’s address bar.
1. Susan Satterfield, “Livy and the Pax Deum,” Classical Philology 111, no. 2 (April 2016): 170.
2. Shao-Hsun Keng, Chun-Hung Lin, and Peter F. Orazem, “Expanding College Access in Taiwan, 1978–2014: Effects on Graduate Quality and Income Inequality,” Journal of Human Capital 11, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 9–10, https://doi-org.silk.library.umass.edu/10.1086/690235.
3. Peter LaSalle, “Conundrum: A Story about Reading,” New England Review 38, no. 1 (2017): 95, Project MUSE.
4. Satterfield, “Livy,” 172–73.
5. Keng, Lin, and Orazem, “Expanding College Access,” 23.
6. LaSalle, “Conundrum,” 101.
Articles from newspapers or news sites, magazines, blogs, and the like are cited similarly. Page numbers, if any, should be cited in the note. If you consulted the article online, include a URL or the name of the database.
1. Rebecca Mead, “The Prophet of Dystopia,” New Yorker, April 17, 2017, 43.
2. Farhad Manjoo, “Snap Makes a Bet on the Cultural Supremacy of the Camera,” The New York Times, March 8, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/08/technology/snap-makes-a-bet-on-the-cultural-supremacy-of-the-camera.html.
3. Rob Pegoraro, “Apple’s iPhone Is Sleek, Smart and Simple,” Washington Post, July 5, 2007, LexisNexis Academic.
4. Tanya Pai, “The Squishy, Sugary History of Peeps,” Vox, April 11, 2017, http://www.vox.com/culture/2017/4/11/15209084/peeps-easter.
5. Mead, “Dystopia,” 47.
6. Manjoo, “Snap.”
7. Pegoraro, “Apple’s iPhone.”
8. Pai, “History of Peeps.”
It is often sufficient simply to describe web pages and other website content in the text (“As of May 1, 2017, Yale’s home page listed . . .”). If a more formal citation is needed, it may be styled like the examples below. For a source that does not list a date of publication or revision, include an access date (as in example note 2).
If a source can be accessed without the URL (for instance, a newspaper article that was accessed online), we remove the link for our print layout.
1. “Privacy Policy,” Privacy & Terms, Google, last modified April 17, 2017, https://www-google-com.silk.library.umass.edu/policies/privacy/.
2. “About Yale: Yale Facts,” Yale University, accessed May 1, 2017, https://www-yale-edu.silk.library.umass.edu/about-yale/yale-facts.
3. Katie Bouman, “How to Take a Picture of a Black Hole,” filmed November 2016 at TEDxBeaconStreet, Brookline, MA, video, 12:51, https://www.ted.com/talks/katie_bouman_what_does_a_black_hole_look_like.
4. Google, “Privacy Policy.”
5. “Yale Facts.”
6. Bouman, “Black Hole.”
If an English translation of a title is needed, it follows the original title and is enclosed in brackets, without italics or quotation marks. It is capitalized sentence-style regardless of the bibliographic style followed.
1. Henryk Wereszycki, Koniec sojuszu trzech cesarzy [The end of the Three Emperors’ League] (Warsaw: PWN, 1977); includes a summary in German.
2. W. Kern, “Waar verzamelde Pigafetta zijn Maleise woorden?” [Where did Pigafetta collect his Malaysian words?], Tijdschrift voor Indische taal-, land- en volkenkunde 78 (1938): 272.
We only put superscript citations at the end of sentences. When that results in multiple citations for one sentence, list them separated by a semicolon and a period at the end.
Film Title. Medium. Directed by First Name Last Name. Distributor City: Distributor, Year of Release.
BibMe: The Movie. DVD. Directed by John Smith. Los Angeles: Columbia, 2001.
Bruce Springsteen, “Atlantic City,” track 2 on Nebraska, Columbia Records, 1982, cassette.
Title of Work, episode number, “Episode Title,” directed/written/performed by Firstname Lastname, aired Month day, year, on Network Name, URL.
For Notes style, please include a footnote or endnote for each reference. Please make sure to use the endnote or footnote feature in your word processing program/Google Docs. For print layout in InDesign, our designers need the notes to be incorporated into the main body text. You can do this by manually copying and pasting the footnotes into the end of the document (with the numbers!) or you can add the “Endnotes Generator” Tool on Google Docs to turn the footnotes into endnotes.
The foot/endnotes should be in the following formats. These are taken directly from the Chicago Manual of Style’s Quick Guide. Note that for each example, there is a long version (for the first time the source is cited) and a short version (for all subsequent times). We do not use "op. cit." or "ibid."
Check all titles by looking at an image of the book cover. Do not assume, for instance, that a reviewer has the correct title. S/he may have been working from an advance copy or from memory, both of which could be wrong.
For book reviews included in the magazine, only direct quotations from the book need to include a reference, in the form of the corresponding page number within parentheses:
“The arrogance of English is that the only way to be animate, to be worthy of respect and moral concern, is to be human” (p. 57).
(From Jessica Thomson's review of Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass. )
Note: all external references must follow the same guidelines for other reference types outlined on this page.
Please refer to the Chicago Manual of Style guidelines for these here: