How to format your references using the Oncotarget citation style

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

Güntürkün O. Human behaviour: Adult persistence of head-turning asymmetry. Nature. 2003; 421: 711.

A journal article with 2 authors

Snook RR, Hosken DJ. Sperm death and dumping in Drosophila. Nature. 2004; 428: 939–41.

A journal article with 3 authors

Glover JD, Reganold JP, Cox CM. Agriculture: Plant perennials to save Africa’s soils. Nature. 2012; 489: 359–61.

A journal article with 14 or more authors

Yasmin L, Chen X, Stubbs KA, Raston CL. Optimising a vortex fluidic device for controlling chemical reactivity and selectivity. Sci Rep. 2013; 3: 2282.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ibe OC. Elements of Random Walk and Diffusion Processes. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc; 2013.

An edited book

Barnaghi P, Moessner K, Presser M, Meissner S, editors. Smart Sensing and Context: 4th European Conference, EuroSSC 2009, Guildford, UK, September 16-18, 2009. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2009. XI, 219 p p.

A chapter in an edited book

Goyeau B. Macroscopic Conduction Models by Volume Averaging for Two-Phase Systems. In: Volz S, editor. Thermal Nanosystems and Nanomaterials. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2009. p. 95–105.

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 Oncotarget.

Blog post

Fang J. How a Killer Parasite Evolved from Pond Scum [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2014 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available 2018 Oct 30, from https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/how-killer-parasite-evolved-pond-scum/

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. Telecommunications: Information on Participation in the E-rate Program (GAO-09-254SP, March 2009), an e-supplement to GAO-09-253. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2009 Apr. Report No.: GAO-09-254SP.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Magda B. Increasing efficacy of emergency departments through systems analysis of enterprise architecture: Mitigating the impact of technological change [Doctoral dissertation]. [Washington, DC]: George Washington University; 2009.

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

Eligon J, Gebeloff R. Segregation, the Neighbor That Won’t Leave. New York Times. 2016; : A1.

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	Oncotarget
Abbreviation	Oncotarget
ISSN (online)	1949-2553
Scope	Oncology