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

Reich, E.S., 2011. Online reputations: Best face forward. Nature 473, 138–139.

A journal article with 2 authors

Strässer, K., Hurt, E., 2001. Splicing factor Sub2p is required for nuclear mRNA export through its interaction with Yra1p. Nature 413, 648–652.

A journal article with 3 authors

Yuan, F., Depew, R., Soltis-Muth, C., 2014. Ecosystem regime change inferred from the distribution of trace metals in Lake Erie sediments. Sci. Rep. 4, 7265.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Maeda, K., Henbest, K.B., Cintolesi, F., Kuprov, I., Rodgers, C.T., Liddell, P.A., Gust, D., Timmel, C.R., Hore, P.J., 2008. Chemical compass model of avian magnetoreception. Nature 453, 387–390.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bradley, D., 2015. Managing Minor Musculoskeletal Injuries and Conditions. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Agrawal, A., Britz, G. (Eds.), 2016. Pediatric Vascular Neurosurgery: Principles and Practice of Neurovascular Disorders (Part 1). Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

van Osch, M., 2006. Hybrid Input-Output Conformance and Test Generation, in: Havelund, K., Núñez, M., Roşu, G., Wolff, B. (Eds.), Formal Approaches to Software Testing and Runtime Verification: First Combined International Workshops, FATES 2006 and RV 2006, Seattle, WA, USA, August 15-16, 2006, Revised Selected Papers, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 70–84.

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

Taub, B., 2016. Coconut Crabs Can Pinch With More Force Than Most Animals Can Bite [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/coconut-crabs-can-pinch-more-force-most-animals-can-bite/ (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, 2004. HHS’s Efforts to Promote Health Information Technology and Legal Barriers to Its Adoption (No. GAO-04-991R). 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

Tucker, M.T., 2009. Structure-property stress state dependent relationships under varying strain rates (Doctoral dissertation). Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS.

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

McKINLEY, J.C., Jr, 2017. Man Who Said He Was Angry at Whites Gets 25 Years for Fatal Punch in Union Sq. New York Times A24.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Reich, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Reich, 2011; Strässer and Hurt, 2001).

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

Two authors: (Strässer and Hurt, 2001)
Three or more authors: (Maeda et al., 2008)

About the journal

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