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

Tracey, K.J., 2002. The inflammatory reflex. Nature 420, 853–859.

A journal article with 2 authors

Lee, G.M., Craik, C.S., 2009. Trapping moving targets with small molecules. Science 324, 213–215.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hochberg, Y.V., Serrano, C., Ziedonis, R., 2015. ENTREPRENEURSHIP. Intangible but bankable. Science 348, 1202.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Libert, S., Zwiener, J., Chu, X., Vanvoorhies, W., Roman, G., Pletcher, S.D., 2007. Regulation of Drosophila life span by olfaction and food-derived odors. Science 315, 1133–1137.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Tschirhart, M., Bielefeld, W., 2012. Managing Nonprofit Organizations. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., San Francisco.

An edited book

Franconi, E., Kifer, M., May, W. (Eds.), 2007. The Semantic Web: Research and Applications: 4th European Semantic Web Conference, ESWC 2007, Innsbruck, Austria, June 3-7, 2007. Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Pazderski, D., Kozłowski, K.R., Krysiak, B., 2009. Nonsmooth Stabilizer for Three Link Nonholonomic Manipulator Using Polar-like Coordinate Representation, in: Kozłowski, K.R. (Ed.), Robot Motion and Control 2009, Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences. Springer, London, pp. 35–44.

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

Davis, J., 2016. Dramatic Jump Of Global Temperature In 2016 Has Shocked Scientists [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/environment/dramatic-jump-of-global-temperature-in-2016-has-shocked-scientists/ (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, 2017. Radioactive Sources: Opportunities Exist for Federal Agencies to Strengthen Transportation Security (No. GAO-17-58). 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

Sefrit, J., 2008. A study of the effectiveness of a school district’s mentoring /professional development plan for beginning teachers (Doctoral dissertation). Lindenwood University, St. Charles, MO.

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

Saslow, L., 2008. College Where $5 Million Makes a Difference. New York Times LI2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Tracey, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Lee and Craik, 2009; Tracey, 2002).

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

Two authors: (Lee and Craik, 2009)
Three or more authors: (Libert et al., 2007)

About the journal

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

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