How to format your references using the Meta Gene citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Meta Gene. 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

Alexandrov, L.B., 2015. Understanding the origins of human cancer. Science 350, 1175.

A journal article with 2 authors

Perera, R.M., Bardeesy, N., 2011. Cancer: when antioxidants are bad. Nature 475, 43–44.

A journal article with 3 authors

Balazs, A.C., Emrick, T., Russell, T.P., 2006. Nanoparticle polymer composites: where two small worlds meet. Science 314, 1107–1110.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Milner, J.J., Toma, C., Yu, B., Zhang, K., Omilusik, K., Phan, A.T., Wang, D., Getzler, A.J., Nguyen, T., Crotty, S., Wang, W., Pipkin, M.E., Goldrath, A.W., 2017. Runx3 programs CD8+ T cell residency in non-lymphoid tissues and tumours. Nature 552, 253–257.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Holt, J., 2013. The Ultimate Daily Show and Philosophy. John Wiley & Sons, Oxford.

An edited book

Tu, J., 2015. Computational Hemodynamics – Theory, Modelling and Applications, Biological and Medical Physics, Biomedical Engineering. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.

A chapter in an edited book

Strand, P., 2008. Introduction – Norwegian Perspective on Nuclear Legacy, in: Sneve, M.K., Kiselev, M.F. (Eds.), Challenges in Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Regulation of the Nuclear Legacy, NATO Science for Peace and Security Series C: Environmental Security. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp. 27–29.

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 Meta Gene.

Blog post

Fang, J., 2014. Half of All Exoplanets Have Two Suns [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1970. Allowances for Independent Research and Development Costs in Negotiated Contracts (No. 094459). 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

Archibald, G.A., 2008. Regionalizing competitive talent: An exploratory study of the role of human capital management in the context of economic integration and labor mobility (Doctoral dissertation). Capella University, Minneapolis, MN.

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

Schwirtz, M., Winerip, M., Gebeloff, R., 2016. The Scourge of Racial Bias in New York State’s Prisons. New York Times A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Alexandrov, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Alexandrov, 2015; Perera and Bardeesy, 2011).

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

Two authors: (Perera and Bardeesy, 2011)
Three or more authors: (Milner et al., 2017)

About the journal

Full journal title	Meta Gene
Abbreviation	Meta Gene
ISSN (print)	2214-5400
Scope	Genetics Genetics(clinical)