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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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 titleMeta Gene
AbbreviationMeta Gene
ISSN (print)2214-5400
ScopeGenetics
Genetics(clinical)

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