How to format your references using the Journal of General Virology citation style

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

Cibelli J. Development. Is therapeutic cloning dead? Science 2007;318:1879–1880.

A journal article with 2 authors

Shah RR, Abbott NL. Principles for measurement of chemical exposure based on recognition-driven anchoring transitions in liquid crystals. Science 2001;293:1296–1299.

A journal article with 3 authors

Courchamp F, Woodroffe R, Roemer G. Removing protected populations to save endangered species. Science 2003;302:1532.

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Huang W, Ma K, Zhang J, Qatanani M, Cuvillier J, et al. Nuclear receptor-dependent bile acid signaling is required for normal liver regeneration. Science 2006;312:233–236.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kerzner H. Project Management Case Studies. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2017.

An edited book

Sobhani-Tehrani E. Fault Diagnosis of Nonlinear Systems Using a Hybrid Approach. Boston, MA: Springer US; 2009.

A chapter in an edited book

Hermanussen M. Growth in Childhood and Puberty. In: Kumanov P, Agarwal A (editors). Puberty: Physiology and Abnormalities. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. pp. 65–76.

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 General Virology.

Blog post

Luntz S. Spiral Arms Seen Around Stars May Have Been Made By Giant Planets. 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. Transportation: Federal Assessments Levied on Commercial Maritime Industry. T-RCED-93-24; Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 25 March 1993.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Nguyen TH. Adolescent substance use family-based treatment: A grant proposal project. Doctoral Dissertation; California State University, Long Beach; 2015.

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

Johnson G. A Subatomic Existential Crisis. New York Times, 20 October 2015, p. D5.

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 General Virology
Abbreviation	J. Gen. Virol.
ISSN (print)	0022-1317
ISSN (online)	1465-2099
Scope	Virology