How to format your references using the Heredity citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Heredity. 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.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
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
Pryciak PM (2008). Systems biology. Customized signaling circuits. Science 319: 1489–1490.
A journal article with 2 authors
Ishikawa H, Barber GN (2008). STING is an endoplasmic reticulum adaptor that facilitates innate immune signalling. Nature 455: 674–678.
A journal article with 3 authors
Geng WT, Wang J-S, Olson GB (2005). Comment on ‘Grain boundary decohesion by impurity segregation in a nickel-sulfur system’. Science 309: 1677; author reply 1677.
A journal article with 7 or more authors
Hirschey MD, Shimazu T, Goetzman E, Jing E, Schwer B, Lombard DB, et al. (2010). SIRT3 regulates mitochondrial fatty-acid oxidation by reversible enzyme deacetylation. Nature 464: 121–125.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Turner JE, Downing DJ, Bogard JS (2012). Statistical Methods in Radiation Physics. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA: Weinheim, Germany.
An edited book
Hölldobler S, Lutz C, Wansing H (Eds.) (2008). Logics in Artificial Intelligence: 11th European Conference, JELIA 2008, Dresden, Germany, September 28-October 1, 2008. Proceedings. Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg.
A chapter in an edited book
Basanow J, Neis P, Neubauer S, Schilling A, Zipf A (2008). Towards 3D Spatial Data Infrastructures (3D-SDI) based on open standards — experiences, results and future issues. In: Oosterom P van, Zlatanova S, Penninga F, Fendel EM (eds) Advances in 3D Geoinformation Systems, Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography. Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 65–86.

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 Heredity.

Blog post
Andrew E (2016). How To Capture The Violent Tumult Of Our Roiling Universe, Moment By Moment. 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 (1975). Improved Planning--A Must Before a Department-Wide Automatic Data Processing System Is Acquired for the Department of Agriculture. 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
Mizokami SK (2015). Fall risk factors among cane and walker users and non-users. Doctoral dissertation Thesis, California State University, Long Beach.

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
Lehman S (2016). The Big Try-On. New York Times: F4.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Pryciak, 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Pryciak, 2008; Ishikawa and Barber, 2008).

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

  • Two authors: (Ishikawa and Barber, 2008)
  • Three or more authors: (Hirschey et al., 2010)

About the journal

Full journal titleHeredity
AbbreviationHeredity (Edinb.)
ISSN (print)0018-067X
ISSN (online)1365-2540
ScopeGenetics
Genetics(clinical)

Other styles