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

FitzGerald, G.A. Medicine. Can Intellectual Property Save Drug Development? Science 2012, 338, 483–484.

A journal article with 2 authors

Rupert, P.B.; Ferré-D’Amaré, A.R. Crystal Structure of a Hairpin Ribozyme-Inhibitor Complex with Implications for Catalysis. Nature 2001, 410, 780–786.

A journal article with 3 authors

Glaser, A.; Mian, Z.; von Hippel, F. NUCLEAR SECURITY. After the Iran Deal: Multinational Enrichment. Science 2015, 348, 1320–1322.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Enquist, B.J.; Kerkhoff, A.J.; Stark, S.C.; Swenson, N.G.; McCarthy, M.C.; Price, C.A. A General Integrative Model for Scaling Plant Growth, Carbon Flux, and Functional Trait Spectra. Nature 2007, 449, 218–222.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Doerfler, W. Foreign DNA in Mammalian Systems; Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH: Weinheim, Germany, 2007; ISBN 9783527613465.

An edited book

Computer Vision: CCF Chinese Conference, CCCV 2015, Xi’an, China, September 18-20, 2015, Proceedings, Part II; Zha, H., Chen, X., Wang, L., Miao, Q., Eds.; Communications in Computer and Information Science; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2015; Vol. 547; ISBN 9783662485699.

A chapter in an edited book

Aalbers, M.B. How Do Mortgage Lenders Influence Neighbourhood Dynamics? Redlining and Predatory Lending. In Understanding Neighbourhood Dynamics: New Insights for Neighbourhood Effects Research; van Ham, M., Manley, D., Bailey, N., Simpson, L., Maclennan, D., Eds.; Springer Netherlands: Dordrecht, 2013; pp. 63–85 ISBN 9789400748538.

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

Taub, B. Experts Call On WHO To Reconsider Global Cannabis Ban (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 Transportation Security: TSA Could Strengthen Monitoring of Allegations of Employee Misconduct; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 2013;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Sahib, S.S. Numerical Solutions of Maxwell’s Equations in 1D, 2D, and 3D via the Finite Element Method. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach: Long Beach, CA, 2010.

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

Chapman, M.M. For the Aged, Self-Driving Cars Could Bridge a Mobility Gap. New York Times 2017, B4.

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