How to format your references using the Drug Discovery Today: Disease Mechanisms citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Drug Discovery Today: Disease Mechanisms. 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

[1]

Apkarian VA. Chemistry. A pixellated window on chemistry in solids. Science 2006;313:1747–8.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

de Winter W, Oxnard CE. Evolutionary radiations and convergences in the structural organization of mammalian brains. Nature 2001;409:710–4.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Baird P, Downie J, Thompson J. Medicine. Clinical trials and industry. Science 2002;297:2211.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Veillet C, Parker JW, Griffin I, Marsden B, Doressoundiram A, Buie M, et al. The binary Kuiper-belt object 1998 WW31. Nature 2002;416:711–3.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Sinzinger S, Jahns J. Microoptics. Weinheim, FRG: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA; 2005.

An edited book

[1]

Middleton L. Hexagonal Image Processing: A Practical Approach. London: Springer; 2005.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Yasuda T, Sakurai K, Takagi T. Reducing the Key Size of Rainbow Using Non-commutative Rings. In: Dunkelman O, editor. Topics in Cryptology – CT-RSA 2012: The Cryptographers’ Track at the RSA Conference 2012, San Francisco, CA, USA, February 27 – March 2, 2012. Proceedings, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2012, p. 68–83.

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 Drug Discovery Today: Disease Mechanisms.

Blog post

[1]

Luntz S. Increase In Gun Deaths Linked To “Stand Your Ground” Law In Florida. IFLScience 2016. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/increase-in-gun-deaths-linked-to-stand-your-ground-law-in-florida/ (accessed October 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

[1]

Government Accountability Office. NASA: Enhanced Use Leasing Program Needs Additional Controls. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2007.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Sweeney DL. Learning in human -dolphin interactions at zoological facilities. Doctoral dissertation. University of California San Diego, 2009.

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

[1]

Mele C. Firearms and Drivers, A Lethal Combination. New York Times 2017:A13.

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	Drug Discovery Today: Disease Mechanisms
Abbreviation	Drug Discov. Today Dis. Mech.
ISSN (print)	1740-6765
Scope	Molecular Medicine Drug Discovery