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

Postle K. Close before opening. Science 2002; 295:1658–9.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kofman AG, Kurizki G. Acceleration of quantum decay processes by frequent observations. Nature 2000; 405:546–50.

A journal article with 3 authors

Wu B, Ooi TL, He ZJ. Perceiving distance accurately by a directional process of integrating ground information. Nature 2004; 428:73–7.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Couder Y, Protière S, Fort E, Boudaoud A. Dynamical phenomena: walking and orbiting droplets. Nature 2005; 437:208.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Thiselton AC. 1 & 2 Thessalonians: Through the Centuries. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell; 2010.

An edited book

Caivano D, Oivo M, Baldassarre MT, Visaggio G, editors. Product-Focused Software Process Improvement: 12th International Conference, PROFES 2011, Torre Canne, Italy, June 20-22, 2011. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

Moos L, Krejsler J, Laursen PF. Denmark. In: Scheerens J, editor. Informal Learning of Active Citizenship at School: An International Comparative Study in Seven European Countries. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2009. page 75–103.

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

O`Callaghan J. SpaceX Will Launch Its First Rocket In Five Months This Sunday. 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. Air Traffic Control: Issues Presented by Proposal to Create a Government Corporation. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1995.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Ramotar-John BP. Supplementing soybean meal with Camelina (Camelina sativa) in tilapia diets and optimizing commercial tilapia diets for use in intensive systems in the Western region of the United States. 2014;

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

Crow K. For Seventh Street, a Love Letter on Film. New York Times2003; :146.

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