How to format your references using the Genetics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Genetics. 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	Download the output style file
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

Zhang J., 2014 Developing excellence: Chinese university reform in three steps. Nature 514: 295–296.

A journal article with 2 authors

Haussecker D., and M. A. Kay, 2015 RNA interference. Drugging RNAi. Science 347: 1069–1070.

A journal article with 3 authors

Keller R. A., M. R. Fisk, and W. M. White, 2000 Isotopic evidence for Late Cretaceous plume-ridge interaction at the Hawaiian hotspot. Nature 405: 673–676.

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Fischer G., S. A. James, I. N. Roberts, S. G. Oliver, and E. J. Louis, 2000 Chromosomal evolution in Saccharomyces. Nature 405: 451–454.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Young G. C., 2010 Municipal Solid Waste to Energy Conversion Processes. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Huang H., T. Liu, H.-P. Zhang, and J. Tang (Eds.), 2014 Social Media Processing: Third National Conference, SMP 2014, Beijing, China, November 1-2, 2014. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Loenen A. van, and M. Xu, 2015 Forecasting and Predictive Control of the Dutch Canal Network, pp. 75–94 in Transport of Water versus Transport over Water: Exploring the Dynamic Interplay of Transport and Water, Operations Research/Computer Science Interfaces Series. edited by Ocampo-Martinez C., Negenborn R. R. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

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 Genetics.

Blog post

Andrew D., 2016 Drugs Fatalities Overtake Car Fatalities For The First Time. IFLScience.

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, 2001 Telecommunications: Metropolitan Area Acquisition Program Implementation and Management. 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

Horaist D. W., 2015 Estimating Seed Bank Responses to Changing Environmental Conditions in the Louisiana Coastal Zone

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

Apuzzo M., A. Goldman, and M. Mazzetti, 2017 F.B.I. Warned G.O.P. Congressman Russian Spies Were Recruiting Him. New York Times A15.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Zhang 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Zhang 2014; Haussecker and Kay 2015).

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

Two authors: (Haussecker and Kay 2015)
Three or more authors: (Fischer et al. 2000)

About the journal

Full journal title	Genetics
Abbreviation	Genetics
ISSN (print)	0016-6731
ISSN (online)	1943-2631
Scope	Genetics