How to format your references using the PeerJ citation style

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

Hoffmann JA. 2003. The immune response of Drosophila. Nature 426:33–38.

A journal article with 2 authors

Adam C, Vidal V. 2010. Mantle flow drives the subsidence of oceanic plates. Science (New York, N.Y.) 328:83–85.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hu H, Gan J, Jonas P. 2014. Interneurons. Fast-spiking, parvalbumin⁺ GABAergic interneurons: from cellular design to microcircuit function. Science (New York, N.Y.) 345:1255263.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Chatterjee M, Osborne J, Bestetti G, Chang Y, Moore PS. 2002. Viral IL-6-induced cell proliferation and immune evasion of interferon activity. Science (New York, N.Y.) 298:1432–1435.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Snell RS, Lemp MA. 1997. Clinical Anatomy of the Eye. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Science Ltd,.

An edited book

Lasaponara R, Masini N, Orefici G (eds.). 2016. The Ancient Nasca World: New Insights from Science and Archaeology. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Farooq U, Marrakchi Z, Mehrez H. 2012. Tree-Based Application Specific Inflexible FPGA. In: Marrakchi Z, Mehrez H eds. Tree-based Heterogeneous FPGA Architectures: Application Specific Exploration and Optimization. New York, NY: Springer, 123–151.

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 PeerJ.

Blog post

Hamilton K. 2014.Amazing GIFs of Octopus Camouflage. Available at https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/amazing-gifs-octopus-camouflage/ (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

Government Accountability Office. 1991. Federal Research: Small Business Innovation Research Program Shows Success But Could Be Strengthened. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Rogers RC. 2010. Documenting cultural transition through contact archaeology in Tíhoo, Mérida, Yucatán. Doctoral dissertation Thesis. Boca Raton, FL: Florida Atlantic University.

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

Lee L. 2014. Gazing Into the Void. New York Times:D2.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Hoffmann, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Hoffmann, 2003; Adam & Vidal, 2010).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Adam & Vidal, 2010)
Three authors: (Hu, Gan & Jonas, 2014)
4 or more authors: (Chatterjee et al., 2002)

About the journal

Full journal title	PeerJ
Abbreviation	PeerJ
ISSN (online)	2167-8359
Scope	General Agricultural and Biological Sciences General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology General Medicine General Neuroscience