How to format your references using the Investigative Genetics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Investigative 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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. Butlin R. Comment on “Transitions to asexuality result in excess amino acid substitutions.” Science. 2006;313:1389; author reply 1389.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Douglas T, Young M. Viruses: making friends with old foes. Science. 2006;312:873–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Wolfe JM, Horowitz TS, Kenner NM. Cognitive psychology: rare items often missed in visual searches. Nature. 2005;435:439–40.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Clark PU, Mitrovica JX, Milne GA, Tamisiea ME. Sea-level fingerprinting as a direct test for the source of global meltwater pulse IA. Science. 2002;295:2438–41.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Flood JM. Wiley Gaap 2015. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2014.

An edited book

1. Bloem R, Arbel E, editors. Hardware and Software: Verification and Testing: 12th International Haifa Verification Conference, HVC 2016, Haifa, Israel, November 14-17, 2016, Proceedings. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Legris J. Paul Hertz’s Systems of Propositions As a Proof-Theoretical Conception of Logic. In: Pereira LC, Haeusler EH, de Paiva V, editors. Advances in Natural Deduction: A Celebration of Dag Prawitz’s Work. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2014. p. 93–101.

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 Investigative Genetics.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Is The Global Warming ‘Hiatus’ Over? IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015.

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. Student Attrition at the Five Federal Service Academies. Enclosure B: Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1976 Mar. Report No.: FPCD-76-12B.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Sowers PA. “Klanaheim”: Suburbia, civic identity, and the second Ku Klux Klan [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2012.

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. Gustines GG. Friendly Neighborhood Web-Slinger Exhibition. New York Times. 2017 Jun 29;C16.

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	Investigative Genetics
Abbreviation	Investig. Genet.
ISSN (online)	2041-2223
Scope	Genetics Molecular Biology Pathology and Forensic Medicine