How to format your references using the GigaScience citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for GigaScience. 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

1. Müller-Wille S. Plant taxonomy: The love of plants. Nature. 2007;446:268.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Meacham CE, Morrison SJ. Tumour heterogeneity and cancer cell plasticity. Nature. 2013;501:328–37.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Rhee H, Polak L, Fuchs E. Lhx2 maintains stem cell character in hair follicles. Science. 2006;312:1946–9.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Kohler TA, Smith ME, Bogaard A, Feinman GM, Peterson CE, Betzenhauser A, et al. Greater post-Neolithic wealth disparities in Eurasia than in North America and Mesoamerica. Nature. 2017;551:619–22.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Rogers EF Jr. Aquinas and the Supreme Court. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2013.

An edited book

1. Priami C, Merelli E, Gonzalez P, Omicini A, editors. Transactions on Computational Systems Biology III. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2005.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Pérez JPA, Pueyo SC, López BC. Conclusions. In: Pueyo SC, López BC, editors. Automatic Gain Control: Techniques and Architectures for RF Receivers. New York, NY: Springer; 2011. p. 117–20.

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 GigaScience.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Former NASA Engineer Plans To Plant 1 Billion Trees A Year Using Drones [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/environment/drones-take-reforestation-new-heights/

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

1. Government Accountability Office. Corrective Actions Taken or in Process To Reduce Job Corps’ Vulnerability to Improper Use of Contracting Authority. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1983 Jul. Report No.: HRD-83-66.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Nolan C. Safety Mindfulness: The Incorporation of Low-Dose Mindfulness as a Leading Edge Safety Intervention [Doctoral dissertation]. [Malibu, CA]: Pepperdine University; 2017.

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

1. Zernike K. ‘A Crazy Shake.’ Then Metal Tearing, and Chaos. New York Times. 2015 May 14;A1.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	GigaScience
Abbreviation	Gigascience
ISSN (online)	2047-217X
Scope