How to format your references using the Current Opinion in Virology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Current Opinion in Virology. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Diamond J: Unwritten knowledge. Nature 2001, 410:521.

A journal article with 2 authors

Rowland JM, Emlen DJ: Two thresholds, three male forms result in facultative male trimorphism in beetles. Science 2009, 323:773–776.

A journal article with 3 authors

Elsaesser H, Sauer K, Brooks DG: IL-21 is required to control chronic viral infection. Science 2009, 324:1569–1572.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Wang S, Li E, Porth I, Chen J-G, Mansfield SD, Douglas CJ: Regulation of secondary cell wall biosynthesis by poplar R2R3 MYB transcription factor PtrMYB152 in Arabidopsis. Sci Rep 2014, 4:5054.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Habart-Corlosquet M, Janssen J, Manca R: VaR Methodology for Non-Gaussian Finance. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2013.

An edited book

Vos PD, Garrity GM, Jones D, Krieg NR, Ludwig W, Rainey FA, Schleifer K-H, Whitman WB (Eds): Bergey’s Manual® of Systematic Bacteriology: Volume Three The Firmicutes. Springer; 2009.

A chapter in an edited book

Bhowmik MK, Kennedy KJ: ‘Out of School’ Ethnic Minority Young People: Multiple Data Sources, Their Meaning, and Extent of the ‘Out of School’ Phenomenon. In ‘Out of School’ Ethnic Minority Young People in Hong Kong. Edited by Kennedy KJ. Springer; 2016:79–114.

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 Current Opinion in Virology.

Blog post

Andrew D: Our Experiments Taught Us Why People Troll. IFLScience 2017,

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: Curriculum Case Studies Are of Questionable Quality but Helped Precollege Curriculum Activities. U.S. Government Printing Office; 1977.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Crowell ML: A Case Study into the Perception of World Language Study of All Stakeholders in a Suburban Midwest School District. 2016,

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

Hodgman J: Bonus Advice From Judge John Hodgman. New York Times 2017,

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	Current Opinion in Virology
Abbreviation	Curr. Opin. Virol.
ISSN (print)	1879-6257
ISSN (online)	1879-6265
Scope	Virology