How to format your references using the Database citation style

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

Poo, M.-M. (2004) Cultural reflections. Nature, 428, 204–205.

A journal article with 2 authors

Enquist, B.J. and Niklas, K.J. (2001) Invariant scaling relations across tree-dominated communities. Nature, 410, 655–660.

A journal article with 3 authors

Liu, Z.-K., Wang, Y. and Shang, S. (2014) Thermal expansion anomaly regulated by entropy. Sci. Rep., 4, 7043.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Kato, Y.K., Myers, R.C., Gossard, A.C., et al. (2004) Observation of the spin Hall effect in semiconductors. Science, 306, 1910–1913.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Shore, S.N. (2005) The Tapestry of Modern Astrophysics. The Tapestry of Modern Astrophysics; Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, FRG, (2005) .

An edited book

Takamura, S. (ed.) (2006) Splitting Deformations of Degenerations of Complex Curves: Towards the Classification of Atoms of Degenerations, III. Splitting Deformations of Degenerations of Complex Curves: Towards the Classification of Atoms of Degenerations, III; Lecture Notes in Mathematics; Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, (2006) ; Vol. 1886.

A chapter in an edited book

Wang, R.F. (2007) Spatial Processing and View-Dependent Representations. In Mast, F., Jäncke, L. (eds.), Spatial Processing in Navigation, Imagery and Perception, Springer US, Boston, MA, pp. 49–65.

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 Database.

Blog post

Carpineti, A. (2016) The Space Around Galaxies Is Full Of Heavy Elements. The Space Around Galaxies Is Full Of Heavy Elements https://www.iflscience.com/space/the-space-around-galaxies-is-full-of-heavy-elements/ (accessed Oct 30, 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 (1991) Mass Transit: Significant Federal Investment Is Not Adequately Protected. Mass Transit: Significant Federal Investment Is Not Adequately Protected; T-RCED-91-68; U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, (1991) .

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Morissette, T.M. (2009) Elder friendliness and social participation of older adults living within age-segregated retirement communities. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Kenigsberg, B. (2017) Company Town. Company Town. New York Times (2017) , C6.

In-text citations

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

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	Database
Abbreviation	Database (Oxford)
ISSN (online)	1758-0463
Scope	General Agricultural and Biological Sciences General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology Information Systems