How to format your references using the PLOS ONE citation style

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

Heber U. Astronomy. White dwarf mergers and the rebirth of luminous stars. Science. 2002;296: 2344–2345.

A journal article with 2 authors

Clark CM, Tilman D. Loss of plant species after chronic low-level nitrogen deposition to prairie grasslands. Nature. 2008;451: 712–715.

A journal article with 3 authors

Shelly DR, Beroza GC, Ide S. Non-volcanic tremor and low-frequency earthquake swarms. Nature. 2007;446: 305–307.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Mancuso K, Hauswirth WW, Li Q, Connor TB, Kuchenbecker JA, Mauck MC, et al. Gene therapy for red-green colour blindness in adult primates. Nature. 2009;461: 784–787.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Leuf B. The Semantic Web. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2006.

An edited book

Gaisbauer HP, Schweiger G, Sedmak C, editors. Ethical Issues in Poverty Alleviation. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Salviano CF, Alves AM, Stefanuto GN, Maintinguer ST, Mattos CV, Zeitoum C. CERTICS - An ISO/IEC 15504 Conformance Model for Software Technological Development and Innovation. In: Mitasiunas A, Rout T, O’Connor RV, Dorling A, editors. Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination: 14th International Conference, SPICE 2014, Vilnius, Lithuania, November 4-6, 2014, Proceedings. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2014. pp. 48–59.

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 ONE.

Blog post

Hamilton K. The Largest Living Thing On Earth Is Mostly Hidden From View. In: IFLScience. IFLScience; 11 May 2017.

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. U.S. Aerospace Industry: Progress in Implementing Aerospace Commission Recommendations, and Remaining Challenges. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2006 Sep. Report No.: GAO-06-920.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Duffy B. Analytical Methods and Perturbation Theory for the Elliptic Restricted Three-Body Problem of Astrodynamics. Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University. 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

Brantley B. Next Stop: An a Cappella Subway Journey. New York Times. 12 Dec 2016: C6.

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 ONE
Abbreviation	PLoS One
ISSN (online)	1932-6203
Scope	General Agricultural and Biological Sciences General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology General Medicine