How to format your references using the Gene: X citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Gene: X. 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
Nicholls, H., 2011. The art of conservation. Nature 472, 287–289.
A journal article with 2 authors
Marone, C., Richardson, E., 2006. Geophysics. Do earthquakes rupture piece by piece or all together? Science 313, 1748–1749.
A journal article with 3 authors
Chen, L.M., Friedman, R.M., Roe, A.W., 2003. Optical imaging of a tactile illusion in area 3b of the primary somatosensory cortex. Science 302, 881–885.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Fors, Y., Grudd, H., Rindby, A., Jalilehvand, F., Sandström, M., Cato, I., Bornmalm, L., 2014. Sulfur and iron accumulation in three marine-archaeological shipwrecks in the Baltic Sea: the Ghost, the Crown and the Sword. Sci. Rep. 4, 4222.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Lau, J.Y.F., 2011. An Introduction to Critical Thinking and Creativity. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.
An edited book
Poeppel, D., Overath, T., Popper, A.N., Fay, R.R. (Eds.), 2012. The Human Auditory Cortex, Springer Handbook of Auditory Research. Springer, New York, NY.
A chapter in an edited book
Vaidyanathan, S., 2016. A Novel 4-D Hyperchaotic Thermal Convection System and Its Adaptive Control, in: Azar, A.T., Vaidyanathan, S. (Eds.), Advances in Chaos Theory and Intelligent Control, Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 75–100.

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: X.

Blog post
Luntz, S., 2014. Germany Now Produces Half Of Its Energy Using Solar [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/technology/germany-now-produces-half-its-energy-using-solar/ (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, 1981. Social Security Needs To Better Plan, Develop, and Implement Its Major ADP Systems Redesign Projects (No. HRD-81-47). 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
Henderson, M.M., 2013. Coming to Terms: Career Development Experiences of NCAA Division I Female Student-Athletes in Transition (Doctoral dissertation). George Washington University, Washington, DC.

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
(mrs M S ) Isabella, 1960. Rosenbach and Books. New York Times The New York Times Book ReviewBR15.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Nicholls, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Marone and Richardson, 2006; Nicholls, 2011).

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

  • Two authors: (Marone and Richardson, 2006)
  • Three or more authors: (Fors et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleGene: X
ISSN (print)2590-1583
Scope

Other styles