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

Bourzac K: Batteries: 4 big questions. Nature 2015, 526:S105.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ryan RJH, Bernstein BE: Molecular biology. Genetic events that shape the cancer epigenome. Science 2012, 336:1513–1514.

A journal article with 3 authors

Chalasani R, Gupta A, Vasudevan S: Engineering new layered solids from exfoliated inorganics: a periodically alternating hydrotalcite-montmorillonite layered hybrid. Sci Rep 2013, 3:3498.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Wu GA, Terol J, Ibanez V, López-García A, Pérez-Román E, Borredá C, Domingo C, Tadeo FR, Carbonell-Caballero J, Alonso R, et al.: Genomics of the origin and evolution of Citrus. Nature 2018, 554:311–316.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Adams N: Eclipse of Grace. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2013.

An edited book

Masys A (Ed): Disaster Management: Enabling Resilience. Springer International Publishing; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

Doak DF, Bakker VJ, Goldstein BE, Hale B: What Is the Future of Conservation? In Protecting the Wild: Parks and Wilderness, the Foundation for Conservation. Edited by Wuerthner G, Crist E, Butler T. Island Press/Center for Resource Economics; 2015:27–35.

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

Fang J: Aluminum Debris from Amelia Earhart’s Plane Found. IFLScience 2014,

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: Airline Mergers: Issues Raised by the Proposed Merger of American Airlines and US Airways. U.S. Government Printing Office; 2013.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Bustos I: Backpacking Through My Suburban Barrio: Eco-Latina Diaries. 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

Wagner J: Cubs Send Nationals to Their Latest Early Exit. 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

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