How to format your references using the animal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for animal. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author
Georghiou L 2008. Europe’s research system must change. Nature 452, 935–936.
A journal article with 2 authors
Dranovsky A and Leonardo ED 2015. Neuroscience: The power of positivity. Nature 522, 294–295.
A journal article with 3 authors
Plata G, Henry CS and Vitkup D 2015. Long-term phenotypic evolution of bacteria. Nature 517, 369–372.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Uemura M, Kato T, Ishioka R, Yamaoka H, Monard B, Nogami D, Maehara H, Sugie A and Takahashi S 2003. Structure in the early afterglow light curve of the gamma-ray burst of 29 March 2003. Nature 423, 843–844.

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book
Samara T 2015. ERP and Information Systems. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.
An edited book
Lewis D, Eysenbach G, Kukafka R, Stavri PZ and Jimison HB (Eds) 2005. Consumer Health Informatics: Informing Consumers and Improving Health Care. Springer, New York, NY.
A chapter in an edited book
Rusyaeva E 2014. Cognitive Techniques of Knowledge Formation. In Knowledge-Based Software Engineering: 11th Joint Conference, JCKBSE 2014, Volgograd, Russia, September 17-20, 2014. Proceedings (eds. A. Kravets, M. Shcherbakov, M. Kultsova and T. Iijima), Communications in Computer and Information Science, pp. 40–48. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for animal.

Blog post
Hale T 2016. Shape Of A Woman’s Vagina Can Seriously Impact Her Sex Life, According To A New Study. IFLScience. Retrieved on 30 October 2018, from https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/shape-woman-s-vagina-effects-ability-orgasm-study-says/.

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report
Government Accountability Office 1999. Year 2000 Computing Crisis: Customs Is Making Good Progress. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation
Joseph OW 2009. A study of the effectiveness of mentor roles in a rural school district. Doctoral dissertation Thesis. University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD.

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article
Saslow L 2009. Districts Pursue School-Closing Plans to Save Money. New York Times, LI5.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Georghiou, 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Georghiou, 2008; Dranovsky and Leonardo, 2015).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

  • Two authors: (Dranovsky and Leonardo, 2015)
  • Three or more authors: (Uemura et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal titleanimal
AbbreviationAnimal
ISSN (print)1751-7311
ISSN (online)1751-732X
ScopeAnimal Science and Zoology

Other styles