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

Pan, H., 2014. Metal dichalcogenides monolayers: novel catalysts for electrochemical hydrogen production. Sci. Rep. 4, 5348.

A journal article with 2 authors

Wang, L., Sigworth, F.J., 2009. Structure of the BK potassium channel in a lipid membrane from electron cryomicroscopy. Nature 461, 292–295.

A journal article with 3 authors

Lai, Y.-T., Cascio, D., Yeates, T.O., 2012. Structure of a 16-nm cage designed by using protein oligomers. Science 336, 1129.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Haering, C.H., Farcas, A.-M., Arumugam, P., Metson, J., Nasmyth, K., 2008. The cohesin ring concatenates sister DNA molecules. Nature 454, 297–301.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sigee, D.C., 2005. Freshwater Microbiology. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Scozzari, A., Dotsika, E. (Eds.), 2016. Threats to the Quality of Groundwater Resources: Prevention and Control, The Handbook of Environmental Chemistry. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Truong, K.N., Patel, S.N., Summet, J.W., Abowd, G.D., 2005. Preventing Camera Recording by Designing a Capture-Resistant Environment, in: Beigl, M., Intille, S., Rekimoto, J., Tokuda, H. (Eds.), UbiComp 2005: Ubiquitous Computing: 7th International Conference, UbiComp 2005, Tokyo, Japan, September 11-14, 2005. Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 73–86.

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. Scarlet Kingsnake Still Mimics Extinct Venomous Species [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/scarlet-kingsnake-still-mimics-extinct-venomous-species/ (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, 1997. Airline Deregulation: Addressing the Air Service Problems of Some Communities (No. T-RCED-97-187). 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

Chellamuthu, V.K., 2015. Structured Population Models: Numerical Methods and Application to Frogs Infected with Chytridiomycosis (Doctoral dissertation). University of Louisiana, Lafayette, LA.

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

Hodgman, J., 2016. Bonus Advice From Judge John Hodgman. New York Times MM26.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Pan, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Pan, 2014; Wang and Sigworth, 2009).

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

Two authors: (Wang and Sigworth, 2009)
Three or more authors: (Haering et al., 2008)

About the journal

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

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