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

Gilbert DM. Making sense of eukaryotic DNA replication origins. Science. 2001;294:96–100.

A journal article with 2 authors

James JR, Vale RD. Biophysical mechanism of T-cell receptor triggering in a reconstituted system. Nature. 2012;487:64–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

Arora PK, Srivastava A, Singh VP. Degradation of 4-chloro-3-nitrophenol via a novel intermediate, 4-chlororesorcinol by Pseudomonas sp. JHN. Sci Rep. 2014;4:4475.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Smartt SJ, Maund JR, Hendry MA, Tout CA, Gilmore GF, Mattila S, et al. Detection of a red supergiant progenitor star of a type II-plateau supernova. Science. 2004;303:499–503.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Alberty RA. Thermodynamics of Biochemical Reactions. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2005.

An edited book

André E, Dybkjær L, Minker W, Neumann H, Pieraccini R, Weber M, editors. Perception in Multimodal Dialogue Systems: 4th IEEE Tutorial and Research Workshop on Perception and Interactive Technologies for Speech-Based Systems, PIT 2008, Kloster Irsee, Germany, June 16-18, 2008. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2008. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science; vol. 5078).

A chapter in an edited book

Li W, Meng W, Kwok L-F. Design of Intrusion Sensitivity-Based Trust Management Model for Collaborative Intrusion Detection Networks. In: Zhou J, Gal-Oz N, Zhang J, Gudes E, editors. Trust Management VIII: 8th IFIP WG 1111 International Conference, IFIPTM 2014, Singapore, July 7-10, 2014 Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2014. p. 61–76. (IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology).

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. 10 Parasites That Could Be Making Your Body Their Home. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2014. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/these-10-parasites-may-be-making-your-body-their-home/. 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. Indian Affairs: Actions Needed to Better Manage Indian School Construction Projects. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2017 May. Report No.: GAO-17-447.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Diorio CA. The silent scream of Medusa: Restoring, or re-storying, her voice [Doctoral dissertation]. [Carpinteria, CA]: Pacifica Graduate Institute; 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

Davey M, Vlasic B, Walsh MW. Detroit Ruling Lifts a Shield on Pensions. New York Times. 2013;A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Gilbert 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Gilbert 2001; James and Vale 2012).

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

Two authors: (James and Vale 2012)
Three or more authors: (Smartt et al. 2004)

About the journal

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

Research and Writing Guides