How to format your references using the Methods and Protocols citation style

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

Heritage, J. Plant Sciences. Will GM Rapeseed Cut the Mustard? Science 2003, 302, 401–403.

A journal article with 2 authors

Zegerman, P.; Diffley, J.F.X. Phosphorylation of Sld2 and Sld3 by Cyclin-Dependent Kinases Promotes DNA Replication in Budding Yeast. Nature 2007, 445, 281–285.

A journal article with 3 authors

Barnes, S.E.; Ieda, J.; Maekawa, S. Rashba Spin-Orbit Anisotropy and the Electric Field Control of Magnetism. Sci. Rep. 2014, 4, 4105.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Rad, R.; Rad, L.; Wang, W.; Cadinanos, J.; Vassiliou, G.; Rice, S.; Campos, L.S.; Yusa, K.; Banerjee, R.; Li, M.A.; et al. PiggyBac Transposon Mutagenesis: A Tool for Cancer Gene Discovery in Mice. Science 2010, 330, 1104–1107.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Birla, R. Introduction to Tissue Engineering; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ, 2014; ISBN 9781118886410.

An edited book

Schneider Beck Fl., A.C. Dynamic Reconfigurable Architectures and Transparent Optimization Techniques: Automatic Acceleration of Software Execution; Carro, L., Ed.; Springer Netherlands: Dordrecht, 2010; ISBN 9789048139125.

A chapter in an edited book

Nanda, S. Variational Inequality and Complementarity Problem. In Topics in Nonconvex Optimization: Theory and Applications; Mishra, S.K., Ed.; Springer Optimization and Its Applications; Springer: New York, NY, 2011; pp. 63–78 ISBN 9781441996398.

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 Methods and Protocols.

Blog post

Fang, J. Mini Human Stomachs Grown in the Lab Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/mini-human-stomachs-grown-lab/ (accessed on 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 Regulatory Initiatives of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 2001;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Thigpen, L.C. Building a Concrete Foundation: A Mixed-Method Study of Teaching Styles and the Use of Concrete, Representational, and Abstract Mathematics Instruction. Doctoral dissertation, Capella University: Minneapolis, MN, 2012.

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

Kelly, D. Model Citizen. New York Times 1995, 720.

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	Methods and Protocols
Abbreviation	Methods Protoc.
ISSN (online)	2409-9279
Scope