How to format your references using the Journal of Cheminformatics citation style

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

James RD (2015) Materials science: Magnetic alloys break the rules. Nature 521:298–299

A journal article with 2 authors

Forget AL, Kowalczykowski SC (2012) Single-molecule imaging of DNA pairing by RecA reveals a three-dimensional homology search. Nature 482:423–427

A journal article with 3 authors

Watson EB, Thomas JB, Cherniak DJ (2007) 40Ar retention in the terrestrial planets. Nature 449:299–304

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Klimov VI, Ivanov SA, Nanda J, et al (2007) Single-exciton optical gain in semiconductor nanocrystals. Nature 447:441–446

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Gu X, Jiang N, Ji K, et al (2017) Self-healing Control Technology for Distribution Networks. John Wiley & Sons Singapore Pte. Ltd, Singapore

An edited book

Latifi S (2016) Information Technology: New Generations: 13th International Conference on Information Technology. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Barrero DF, Camacho D, R-Moreno MD (2009) A Framework for Agent-Based Evaluation of Genetic Algorithms. In: Papadopoulos GA, Badica C (eds) Intelligent Distributed Computing III: Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium on Intelligent Distributed Computing – IDC 2009, Ayia Napa, Cyprus,October 2009. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 31–41

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 Journal of Cheminformatics.

Blog post

Andrew E (2014) 7 Animals Saved From Near-Extinction. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/7-animals-saved-near-extinction/. Accessed 30 Oct 2018

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 (1996) General Government Information Systems Issue Area: Active Assignments. 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

Escobedo NL (2014) A continuing bonds grief support group for Latinas who have lost a child: A grant proposal. Doctoral dissertation, 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

Kelly M (1993) Again: It’s Hillary Rodham Clinton. Got That? New York Times 133

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	Journal of Cheminformatics
Abbreviation	J. Cheminform.
ISSN (online)	1758-2946
Scope	Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design Computer Science Applications Library and Information Sciences

Research and Writing Guides