How to format your references using the Diagnostics citation style

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

Vaux, D.L. Research Methods: Know When Your Numbers Are Significant. Nature 2012, 492, 180–181.

A journal article with 2 authors

Andersson, C.; Read, D. Group Size and Cultural Complexity. Nature 2014, 511, E1.

A journal article with 3 authors

Tomoyasu, Y.; Wheeler, S.R.; Denell, R.E. Ultrabithorax Is Required for Membranous Wing Identity in the Beetle Tribolium Castaneum. Nature 2005, 433, 643–647.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Gonçalves, G.; Vila, M.; Bdikin, I.; de Andrés, A.; Emami, N.; Ferreira, R.A.S.; Carlos, L.D.; Grácio, J.; Marques, P.A.A.P. Breakdown into Nanoscale of Graphene Oxide: Confined Hot Spot Atomic Reduction and Fragmentation. Sci. Rep. 2014, 4, 6735.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Radwanska, M.; Stankiewicz, A.; Wosatko, A.; Pamin, J. Plate and Shell Structures; John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: Chichester, UK, 2017; ISBN 9781118934531.

An edited book

Goossens, S. Memory Controllers for Mixed-Time-Criticality Systems: Architectures, Methodologies and Trade-Offs; Chandrasekar, K., Akesson, B., Goossens, K., Eds.; Embedded Systems; Springer International Publishing: Cham, 2016; ISBN 9783319320939.

A chapter in an edited book

Declèves, X.; Strazielle, N.; Scherrmann, J.-M.; Ghersi-Egea, J.-F. Drug Metabolism at the Blood–Brain and Blood–CSF Barriers. In Drug Delivery to the Brain: Physiological Concepts, Methodologies and Approaches; Hammarlund-Udenaes, M., de Lange, E.C.M., Thorne, R.G., Eds.; AAPS Advances in the Pharmaceutical Sciences Series; Springer: New York, NY, 2014; pp. 101–124 ISBN 9781461491040.

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 Diagnostics.

Blog post

Davis, J. Woman Gives Birth After Having Frozen Ovarian Tissue Re-Implanted In UK First (accessed on 30 October 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 Electronic Government: Challenges to the Adoption of Smart Card Technology; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 2003;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Taylor, T.E. Characterizing EGFRvIII-Independent Glioblastoma Maintenance. Doctoral dissertation, University of California San Diego: La Jolla, CA, 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

Marx, L. A Romance With Birthdays as Bookends. New York Times 2016, ST13.

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	Diagnostics
Abbreviation	Diagnostics (Basel)
ISSN (online)	2075-4418
Scope

Research and Writing Guides