How to format your references using the EMBnet.journal citation style

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

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Cash W (2006) Detection of Earth-like planets around nearby stars using a petal-shaped occulter. Nature 442 (7098), 51–53.
A journal article with 2 authors
Toggweiler JR and Russell J (2008) Ocean circulation in a warming climate. Nature 451 (7176), 286–288.
A journal article with 3 authors
Burke MD, Berger EM, and Schreiber SL (2003) Generating diverse skeletons of small molecules combinatorially. Science 302 (5645), 613–618.
A journal article with 6 or more authors
Chen H, Cheng L, Lin X, Zhou X, Cai Z, et al. (2014) Reconstitution of coronary vasculature by an active fraction of Geum japonicum in ischemic hearts. Sci. Rep. 4, 3962.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Salleh S, Zomaya AY, Olariu S, and Sanugi B (2005) Numerical Simulations and Case Studies Using Visual C++.Net John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ,.
An edited book
Faber C, Farkas G, and van der Geer G eds. (2016) K3 Surfaces and Their Moduli Springer International Publishing, Cham,.
A chapter in an edited book
Ravi-Chandar K (2008) Fracture Mechanics. In: SharpeWN (ed) Springer Handbook of Experimental Solid Mechanics. Springer US, Boston, MA, Boston, MA,pp. 125–158

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 EMBnet.journal.

Blog post
Andrew D (2016) Meet The 800-Year-Old Golden Rhinoceros That Challenged Apartheid South Africa. IFLScience https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/meet-the-800yearold-golden-rhinoceros-that-challenged-apartheid-south-africa/ (accessed 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 (1999) Year 2000 Computing Challenge: Agencies’ Reporting of Mission-Critical Classified Systems U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC,.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
Prejean KD (2015) An Analysis of Corporal Punishment Practices in Texas Public Schools: Race, School District Size, Academic Performance, and Policy Influences.

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
Clooney G, Prendergast J, and Kumar A (2015) Sudan’s Rape of Darfur.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Cash, 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Cash, 2006; Toggweiler and Russell, 2008).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

  • Two authors: (Toggweiler and Russell, 2008)
  • Three or more authors: (Chen et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleEMBnet.journal
ISSN (online)2226-6089
Scope

Other styles