How to format your references using the Plasmid citation style

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

Triplett, W., 2000. Astronomers silenced in star-name wars. Nature 406, 448.

A journal article with 2 authors

Taylor, R., Forge, A., 2005. Developmental biology. Life after deaf for hair cells? Science 307, 1056–1058.

A journal article with 3 authors

Petrascheck, M., Ye, X., Buck, L.B., 2007. An antidepressant that extends lifespan in adult Caenorhabditis elegans. Nature 450, 553–556.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Zhang, X.-G., Siveter, D.J., Waloszek, D., Maas, A., 2007. An epipodite-bearing crown-group crustacean from the Lower Cambrian. Nature 449, 595–598.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Levitin, V., 2005. High Temperature Strain of Metals and Alloys. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, FRG.

An edited book

Bolc, L., Tadeusiewicz, R., Chmielewski, L.J., Wojciechowski, K. (Eds.), 2012. Computer Vision and Graphics: International Conference, ICCVG 2012, Warsaw, Poland, September 24-26, 2012. Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Saba, R., Booth, S.A., 2008. MicroRNA Profiling in CNS Tissue Using Microarrays, in: Ying, S.-Y. (Ed.), Current Perspectives in MicroRNAs (MiRNA). Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp. 73–96.

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 Plasmid.

Blog post

O`Callaghan, J., 2016. Pluto May Have Always Had Its Icy Heart [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/space/pluto-may-have-always-had-its-icy-heart/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 2000. Space Shuttle: Human Capital and Safety Upgrade Challenges Require Continued Attention (No. NSIAD/GGD-00-186). U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Smith, B.L., 2017. A Qualitative Study of Veteran Students’ Perspectives of Their Academic Experiences (Doctoral dissertation). University of South Florida, Tampa, FL.

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

Grynbaum, M.M., 2017. A New Press Secretary, for a President at War With the Press. New York Times A12.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Triplett, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Taylor and Forge, 2005; Triplett, 2000).

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

Two authors: (Taylor and Forge, 2005)
Three or more authors: (Zhang et al., 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	Plasmid
Abbreviation	Plasmid
ISSN (print)	0147-619X
Scope	Molecular Biology