How to format your references using the Animals citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Animals. 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
1.
Sanderson, K. US Biofuels: A Field in Ferment. Nature 2006, 444, 673–676.
A journal article with 2 authors
1.
Garcia, C.M.; Ramirez, E. Evidence That Sensory Traps Can Evolve into Honest Signals. Nature 2005, 434, 501–505.
A journal article with 3 authors
1.
Bomfleur, B.; McLoughlin, S.; Vajda, V. Fossilized Nuclei and Chromosomes Reveal 180 Million Years of Genomic Stasis in Royal Ferns. Science 2014, 343, 1376–1377.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
1.
Raghavan, S.; Manzanillo, P.; Chan, K.; Dovey, C.; Cox, J.S. Secreted Transcription Factor Controls Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Virulence. Nature 2008, 454, 717–721.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
1.
Bakker, J.; Clarke, R.J. Wine Flavour Chemistry; Wiley-Blackwell: Oxford, UK, 2011; ISBN 9781444346022.
An edited book
1.
Discontinuity and Complexity in Nonlinear Physical Systems; Machado, J.A.T., Baleanu, D., Luo, A.C.J., Eds.; Nonlinear Systems and Complexity; Springer International Publishing: Cham, 2014; Vol. 6; ISBN 9783319014104.
A chapter in an edited book
1.
Kolobov, A.V.; Tominaga, J. Photo-Induced Anisotropy. In Chalcogenides: Metastability and Phase Change Phenomena; Tominaga, J., Ed.; Springer Series in Materials Science; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2012; pp. 103–121 ISBN 9783642287046.

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 Animals.

Blog post
1.
Andrew, D. First Working Eggs Made From Stem Cells Points To Fertility Breakthrough Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/first-working-eggs-made-from-stem-cells-points-to-fertility-breakthrough/ (accessed on 30 October 2018).

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
1.
Government Accountability Office Air Traffic Control: Improvements Needed In FAA’s Management of Acquisitions; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1993;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
1.
Chun, A.R. Physiological, Ultrastructure, and Preliminary Genomic Characterization of the Marine Protist Thraustochytrium Sp. LLF1b (Class Labyrinthulomycetes). Doctoral dissertation, University of California San Diego: La Jolla, CA, 2017.

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
1.
Walsh, M.W. Tiny Territory, Debt in Billions: Fears Spread to Virgin Islands. New York Times 2017, A1.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal titleAnimals
AbbreviationAnimals (Basel)
ISSN (online)2076-2615
Scope

Other styles