How to format your references using the PLOS Computational Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for PLOS Computational Biology. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Sarewitz D. World view: Missing weapons. Nature. 2010;464: 672.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gani R, Leach S. Transmission potential of smallpox in contemporary populations. Nature. 2001;414: 748–751.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sugrue LP, Corrado GS, Newsome WT. Matching behavior and the representation of value in the parietal cortex. Science. 2004;304: 1782–1787.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Seres J, Seres E, Landgraf B, Ecker B, Aurand B, Kuehl T, et al. High-harmonic generation and parametric amplification in the soft X-rays from extended electron trajectories. Sci Rep. 2014;4: 4234.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Miller MA. Internet Technologies Handbook. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2005.

An edited book

Guo Y, Friston K, Aldo F, Hill S, Peng H, editors. Brain Informatics and Health: 8th International Conference, BIH 2015, London, UK, August 30 - September 2, 2015. Proceedings. 1st ed. 2015. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

Falmagne J-C, Doble C. Abstract Axioms and their Representations. In: Doble C, editor. On Meaningful Scientific Laws. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2015. pp. 47–57.

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 PLOS Computational Biology.

Blog post

Fang J. The Moon Gets Broadband Wireless Connection. In: IFLScience [Internet]. IFLScience; 30 May 2014 [cited 30 Oct 2018]. Available: https://www.iflscience.com/space/moon-gets-broadband-wireless-connection/

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. Small Business Research Programs: More Guidance and Oversight Needed to Comply with Spending and Reporting Requirements. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2014 Jun. Report No.: GAO-14-431.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Conti AI. Dirty hands, virtue ethics, and consequentialism. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach. 2012.

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

GEORGE ETHEREDGE for THE NEW YORK TIMES. Chandeliers. New York Times. 21 Oct 2016: RE13.

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	PLOS Computational Biology
Abbreviation	PLoS Comput. Biol.
ISSN (print)	1553-734X
ISSN (online)	1553-7358
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Genetics Molecular Biology Computational Theory and Mathematics Ecology Modelling and Simulation Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience