How to format your references using the PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. 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

Michaels AF. Ocean science. Highly active eddies. Science. 2007;316: 992–993.

A journal article with 2 authors

Guth AH, Kaiser DI. Inflationary cosmology: exploring the universe from the smallest to the largest scales. Science. 2005;307: 884–890.

A journal article with 3 authors

Nateri AS, Spencer-Dene B, Behrens A. Interaction of phosphorylated c-Jun with TCF4 regulates intestinal cancer development. Nature. 2005;437: 281–285.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Collier LS, Carlson CM, Ravimohan S, Dupuy AJ, Largaespada DA. Cancer gene discovery in solid tumours using transposon-based somatic mutagenesis in the mouse. Nature. 2005;436: 272–276.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS). Supplemental Proceedings. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2011.

An edited book

Lynch NA, Shvartsman AA, editors. Distributed Computing: 24th International Symposium, DISC 2010, Cambridge, MA, USA, September 13-15, 2010. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2010.

A chapter in an edited book

Seidl M, Scholz M, Huemer C, Kappel G. The Class Diagram. In: Scholz M, Huemer C, Kappel G, editors. UML @ Classroom: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Modeling. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015. pp. 49–84.

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 Neglected Tropical Diseases.

Blog post

Luntz S. Largest Known Asteroid Impact Zone Discovered. In: IFLScience [Internet]. IFLScience; 24 Mar 2015 [cited 30 Oct 2018]. Available: https://www.iflscience.com/space/asteroid-impact-zone-may-be-world-largest/

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. Armored Systems Modernization: Program Inconsistent With Current Threat and Budgetary Constraints. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1991 Jul. Report No.: NSIAD-91-254.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Bissell GH. Working in the transference as a multicultural intervention. Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University. 2011.

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

Paulson M. ‘Mean Girls’ Musical Is Broadway Bound. New York Times. 6 Sep 2017: C3.

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 Neglected Tropical Diseases
Abbreviation	PLoS Negl. Trop. Dis.
ISSN (online)	1935-2735
Scope	Infectious Diseases Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health