During typesetting, we will automatically renumber the references if a reference is not cited or if in-text citations are out of order.
Omitting references: For example, if reference 3 appears in the references list (in RefCheck) in the copyedited manuscript but is not cited in the manuscript as [3], it will be omitted from the references (the bibliography at the end) and all references and in-text citations after 3 will be renumbered, i.e. [4] becomes [3] etc. (and the corresponding references in the bibliography at the end will be renumbered as well).
Reordering references: Similarly, if references are cited out of order in the copyedited manuscript, e.g. [4] is cited before [3], our typesetting software will automatically renumber the references. This makes it possible for the author and editor to move blocks of texts around within the manuscript without having to worry about the references to be cited sequentially.
See also: