How to format your references using the Placenta citation style

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

S.J. Smartt, Astrophysics: A twist in the tale of γ-ray bursts, Nature. 523 (2015) 164–166.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Z. Zhan, S.A. Barnett, An octane-fueled solid oxide fuel cell, Science. 308 (2005) 844–847.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

L. von Melchner, S.L. Pallas, M. Sur, Visual behaviour mediated by retinal projections directed to the auditory pathway, Nature. 404 (2000) 871–876.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

A.M. Kalsin, M. Fialkowski, M. Paszewski, S.K. Smoukov, K.J.M. Bishop, B.A. Grzybowski, Electrostatic self-assembly of binary nanoparticle crystals with a diamond-like lattice, Science. 312 (2006) 420–424.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

G. Stokes, A Practical Guide to the Wiring Regulations, Blackwell Science Ltd, Oxford, UK, 2008.

An edited book

[1]

L.T. Gomes, Fuzzy Differential Equations in Various Approaches, 1st ed. 2015, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

K. Käläntär, Backlights, in: N. Koide (Ed.), The Liquid Crystal Display Story: 50 Years of Liquid Crystal R&D That Lead The Way to the Future, Springer Japan, Tokyo, 2014: pp. 117–129.

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 Placenta.

Blog post

[1]

B. Taub, Does The Length Of Your Fingers Really Reveal How Good Your Directional Sense Is?, IFLScience. (2016).

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, Social Security Numbers: SSNs Are Widely Used by Government and Could Be Better Protected, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2002.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

G.L. Greene, An Analysis of the Comparison between Classroom Grades Earned with a Standards-Based Grading System and Grade-Level Assessment Scores as Measured by the Missouri Assessment Program, Doctoral dissertation, Lindenwood University, 2015.

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. Saslow, Bond Issue Is Approved for Sachem Schools, New York Times. (2008) LI2.

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	Placenta
Abbreviation	Placenta
ISSN (print)	0143-4004
Scope	Developmental Biology Obstetrics and Gynaecology Reproductive Medicine

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