How to format your references using the Gene Reports citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Gene Reports. 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
Trono, D., 2003. Virology. Picking the right spot. Science 300, 1670–1671.
A journal article with 2 authors
Wang, R., Yan, X., 2014. Superior asymmetric supercapacitor based on Ni-Co oxide nanosheets and carbon nanorods. Sci. Rep. 4, 3712.
A journal article with 3 authors
Borsa, A.A., Agnew, D.C., Cayan, D.R., 2014. Remote Hydrology. Ongoing drought-induced uplift in the western United States. Science 345, 1587–1590.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Dumas, J.J., Kumar, R., Seehra, J., Somers, W.S., Mosyak, L., 2003. Crystal structure of the GpIbalpha-thrombin complex essential for platelet aggregation. Science 301, 222–226.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Spiegel, R., 2005. Psychopharmacology. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.
An edited book
Kim, T.-H., Pal, S.K., Grosky, W.I., Pissinou, N., Shih, T.K., Ślęzak, D. (Eds.), 2010. Signal Processing and Multimedia: International Conferences, SIP and MulGraB 2010, Held as Part of the Future Generation Information Technology Conference, FGIT 2010, Jeju Island, Korea, December 13-15, 2010. Proceedings, Communications in Computer and Information Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
A chapter in an edited book
Kolokotronis, N., Limniotis, K., Kalouptsidis, N., 2007. Efficient Computation of the Best Quadratic Approximations of Cubic Boolean Functions, in: Galbraith, S.D. (Ed.), Cryptography and Coding: 11th IMA International Conference, Cirencester, UK, December 18-20, 2007. Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 73–91.

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 Gene Reports.

Blog post
Hamilton, K., 2016. UFOs, Climate Change And Missing Airliners: How To Separate Fact From Fiction [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/ufos-climate-change-and-missing-airliners-how-to-seperate-fact-from-fiction/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1971. Office of Education Should Improve Procedures To Recover Defaulted Loans Under the Guaranteed Student Loan Program (No. B-117604(7)). 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
Hebbard, M.T., 2015. A Depositional Analysis of the Reeves Sand in Beauregard and Allen Parishes, Louisiana (Doctoral dissertation). University of Louisiana, Lafayette, LA.

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
Crow, K., 2002. Running in Place. New York Times 141.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Trono, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Trono, 2003; Wang and Yan, 2014).

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

  • Two authors: (Wang and Yan, 2014)
  • Three or more authors: (Dumas et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal titleGene Reports
AbbreviationGene Rep.
ISSN (print)2452-0144
Scope

Other styles