How to format your references using the Apoptosis citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Apoptosis. 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

Isner JM (2002) Myocardial gene therapy. Nature 415:234–239

A journal article with 2 authors

Nair G, Raj A (2011) Molecular biology. Time-lapse transcription. Science 332:431–432

A journal article with 3 authors

Williams-Guillén K, Perfecto I, Vandermeer J (2008) Bats limit insects in a neotropical agroforestry system. Science 320:70

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Fairhall AL, Lewen GD, Bialek W, de Ruyter Van Steveninck RR (2001) Efficiency and ambiguity in an adaptive neural code. Nature 412:787–792

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Levitin V (2005) High Temperature Strain of Metals and Alloys. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, FRG

An edited book

Shimada Y, Miyakoshi N (2016) Osteoporosis in Orthopedics: Assessment and Therapeutic Options, 1st ed. 2016. Springer Japan, Tokyo

A chapter in an edited book

Nishida Y (2016) Osteosarcoma in the Elderly: Clinical Features and Outcome. In: Ueda T, Kawai A (eds) Osteosarcoma. Springer Japan, Tokyo, pp 59–71

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 Apoptosis.

Blog post

Andrew E (2015) How Did This Bioluminescent Bug Get Its Glow? In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/how-did-bioluminescent-bug-get-its-glow/. Accessed 30 Oct 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

Government Accountability Office (1975) Review of Certain Problems in the Cosmetology Accrediting Commission. 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

Mazgaeen L (2017) Differential RNAi Approaches to Enhance Knockdown Efficiency of Target Gene Transcripts in the Highly DDT-Resistant 91-R Strain of Drosophila melanogaster. Doctoral dissertation, Southern Illinois University

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 (2009) Chamberlain Proves No Match For Rally Monkey. New York Times B17

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 title	Apoptosis
Abbreviation	Apoptosis
ISSN (print)	1360-8185
ISSN (online)	1573-675X
Scope	Cancer Research Cell Biology Clinical Biochemistry Biochemistry, medical Pharmaceutical Science Pharmacology