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

Sarmiento EE. Comment on the paleobiology and classification of Ardipithecus ramidus. Science 2010;328:1105; author reply 1105.

A journal article with 2 authors

Singh DJ, Parker D. Itinerant magnetism in doped semiconducting β-FeSi₂ and CrSi₂. Sci Rep 2013;3:3517.

A journal article with 3 authors

Carslaw KS, Harrison RG, Kirkby J. Cosmic rays, clouds, and climate. Science 2002;298:1732–1737.

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Castellani F, van Rossum B, Diehl A, Schubert M, Rehbein K, et al. Structure of a protein determined by solid-state magic-angle-spinning NMR spectroscopy. Nature 2002;420:98–102.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Doldi L. Validation of Communications Systems with SDL. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2005.

An edited book

Skubov D. Non-Linear Electromechanics. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

Plesiewicz B, Wiszniowski J. Seismicity of Polish Part of the Western Carpathians in the Light of Recent Data. In: Guterch B, Kozák J (editors). Studies of Historical Earthquakes in Southern Poland: Outer Western Carpathian Earthquake of December 3, 1786, and First Macroseismic Maps in 1858-1901. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015. pp. 103–118.

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

Andrew E. Penn & Teller Call Bullshit on Anti-Vaccination. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/penn-teller-call-bullshit-anti-vaccination/ (2014, accessed 30 October 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. The Rise of Political Science. 137895; Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1 January 1988.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Papacostaki M. Under the black sun. Doctoral Dissertation; Pacifica Graduate Institute; 2010.

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

Vecsey G. A Continent’s Hopes Are Swatted Away. New York Times, 3 July 2010, p. D1.

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