How to format your references using the Methods citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Methods. 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	Download the output style file
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

[1]

R. May, Tony Blair’s era: good news, bad news, Nature 447 (2007) 1053.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

L.P. Partida-Martinez, C. Hertweck, Pathogenic fungus harbours endosymbiotic bacteria for toxin production, Nature 437 (2005) 884–888.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

A. Whiten, V. Horner, F.B.M. de Waal, Conformity to cultural norms of tool use in chimpanzees, Nature 437 (2005) 737–740.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

K. Hanada, K. Kumagai, S. Yasuda, Y. Miura, M. Kawano, M. Fukasawa, M. Nishijima, Molecular machinery for non-vesicular trafficking of ceramide, Nature 426 (2003) 803–809.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

N. Pandrea, N.-D. Stănescu, Dynamics of the Rigid Solid with General Constraints by a Multibody Approach, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK, 2015.

An edited book

[1]

D.P. Buse, IP Network-based Multi-agent Systems for Industrial Automation: Information Management, Condition Monitoring and Control of Power Systems, Springer, London, 2007.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

A. Ernst, Acanthoclema (Rhabdomesina, Cryptostomata) from the Devonian of Europe, in: A. Ernst, P. Schäfer, J. Scholz (Eds.), Bryozoan Studies 2010, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2013: pp. 45–58.

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.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, Spare Your Health, Budget, And The Planet: Ditch The Palaeodiet, IFLScience (2015). https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/spare-your-health-budget-and-planet-ditch-palaeodiet/ (accessed October 30, 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

[1]

Government Accountability Office, Possible Extended Use of the Federal Telecommunications System by DOD, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1973.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

J. Ivy, The Psychological Effect of Parental Incarceration on School-Age Children, Doctoral dissertation, Pacifica Graduate Institute, 2011.

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

[1]

L. Qiu, One Distorted View Of the Health Bill, New York Times (2017) A14.

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
Abbreviation	Methods
ISSN (print)	1046-2023
Scope	General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology Molecular Biology