How to format your references using the Annual Review of Genetics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Annual Review of Genetics. 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:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX 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

Schaefer BF. 2005. Geochemistry. When do rocks become oil? Science. 308(5726):1267–68

A journal article with 2 authors

Straneo F, Heimbach P. 2013. North Atlantic warming and the retreat of Greenland’s outlet glaciers. Nature. 504(7478):36–43

A journal article with 3 authors

Buchner DA, Trudeau M, Meisler MH. 2003. SCNM1, a putative RNA splicing factor that modifies disease severity in mice. Science. 301(5635):967–69

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Hu T, Chung YM, Guan M, Ma M, Ma J, et al. 2014. Reprogramming ovarian and breast cancer cells into non-cancerous cells by low-dose metformin or SN-38 through FOXO3 activation. Sci. Rep. 4:5810

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sharpe NF, Carter RF. 2005. Genetic Testing. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Maio M de, Rzany B, eds. 2007. Botulinum Toxin in Aesthetic Medicine. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. XIX, 137 p p.

A chapter in an edited book

Hausawi YM, Allen WH. 2014. An Assessment Framework for Usable-Security Based on Decision Science. In Human Aspects of Information Security, Privacy, and Trust: Second International Conference, HAS 2014, Held as Part of HCI International 2014, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, June 22-27, 2014. Proceedings, ed T Tryfonas, I Askoxylakis, pp. 33–44. Cham: Springer International Publishing

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 Annual Review of Genetics.

Blog post

Andrew E. 2014. Comet Dust Discovered On Earth’s Surface For The First Time Ever. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/comet-dust-discovered-earth-s-surface-first-time-ever/

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. 1997. National Airspace System: Observations on the Wide Area Augmentation System. T-RCED-98-12, 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

Norris C. 2014. What is Lost Along the Way. Doctoral dissertation thesis. California State University, Long Beach

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

Vecsey G. 2011. For the Cardinals, a Classic Finish. New York Times, Oct. 29, p. D4

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (2).
This sentence cites two references (2, 4).
This sentence cites four references (4, 6–8).

About the journal

Full journal title	Annual Review of Genetics
Abbreviation	Annu. Rev. Genet.
ISSN (print)	0066-4197
ISSN (online)	1545-2948
Scope	Genetics