How to format your references using the Rare Diseases citation style

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

Julian B. Plate tectonics. Seismological detection of slab metamorphism. Science 2002; 296:1625–6.

A journal article with 2 authors

Tam WY, Ma CHE. Bipolar/rod-shaped microglia are proliferating microglia with distinct M1/M2 phenotypes. Sci Rep 2014; 4:7279.

A journal article with 3 authors

Mitchell MW, Lundeen JS, Steinberg AM. Super-resolving phase measurements with a multiphoton entangled state. Nature 2004; 429:161–4.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Lloyd-Fox S, Papademetriou M, Darboe MK, Everdell NL, Wegmuller R, Prentice AM, Moore SE, Elwell CE. Functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) to assess cognitive function in infants in rural Africa. Sci Rep 2014; 4:4740.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Maksoud MA. Quick Reference to Dental Implant Surgery. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2017.

An edited book

Tan DS, Nijholt A, editors. Brain-Computer Interfaces: Applying our Minds to Human-Computer Interaction. London: Springer; 2010.

A chapter in an edited book

Liu J, Johnston MR. Laboratory Models of Lung Cancer. In: Syrigos KN, Nutting CM, Roussos C, editors. Tumors of the Chest: Biology, Diagnosis and Management. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2006. page 43–56.

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 Rare Diseases.

Blog post

Hale T. AI Can Predict How Much Longer You Have Left To Live. IFLScience2017;

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. State of the Airline Industry: Strategies for Addressing Financial and Competition Problems. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1993.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Tasoff AJ. Quantifying the Genetic Capacity of California Grunion (Leuresthes tenuis) to Adapt to Ocean Acidification. 2017;

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

Poniewozik J. A Family Revolving Around a Disability. New York Times2016; :C1.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

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	Rare Diseases
Abbreviation	Rare Dis.
ISSN (online)	2167-5511
Scope	General Medicine