How to format your references using the EXCLI Journal citation style

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

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

McKeon BJ. Applied physics. Controlling turbulence. Science. 2010;327:1462–3.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kappe SHI, Mikolajczak SA. Immunology. Another shot at a malaria vaccine. Science. 2011;334:460–1.

A journal article with 3 authors

Cohen M, Shavit R, Zalevsky Z. Observing optical plasmons on a single nanometer scale. Sci Rep. 2014;4:4096.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Koren I, Kaufman YJ, Remer LA, Martins JV. Measurement of the effect of Amazon smoke on inhibition of cloud formation. Science. 2004;303:1342–5.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Blackwood N. Advanced Excel Reporting for Management Accountants. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2014.

An edited book

Thampi SM, Abraham A, Pal SK, Rodriguez JMC, editors. Recent Advances in Intelligent Informatics: Proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Intelligent Informatics (ISI’13), August 23-24 2013, Mysore, India. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2014. (Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing; vol. 235).

A chapter in an edited book

Puig L, Guerrero JJ. Generic Scale-Space for a Camera Invariant Feature Extractor. In: Guerrero JJ, editor. Omnidirectional Vision Systems: Calibration, Feature Extraction and 3D Information. London: Springer; 2013. p. 87–99. (SpringerBriefs in Computer Science).

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 EXCLI Journal.

Blog post

Andrew E. How Does Your Choice Of University Affect Your Future? IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/how-does-your-choice-university-affect-your-future/. 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. Rail Abandonments: Abandonment Activity and Shipper Views on Rail Service Loss. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1987 Jul. Report No.: RCED-87-82.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Yendes DL. Remnants of Life [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2010.

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

Pilon M, Mather V. To Avoid I.O.C. Cut, a Sport Changed. New York Times. 2013;B13.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (McKeon 2010).
This sentence cites two references (McKeon 2010; Kappe and Mikolajczak 2011).

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

Two authors: (Kappe and Mikolajczak 2011)
Three or more authors: (Koren et al. 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	EXCLI Journal
ISSN (online)	1611-2156
Scope