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

DeWitt N. Regenerative medicine. Nature 2008; 453:301.

A journal article with 2 authors

Smith JS, Boeke JD. Transcription. Is S phase important for transcriptional silencing? Science 2001; 291:608–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

Seidel HS, Rockman MV, Kruglyak L. Widespread genetic incompatibility in C. elegans maintained by balancing selection. Science 2008; 319:589–94.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Ordovas-Montanes J, Dwyer DF, Nyquist SK, Buchheit KM, Vukovic M, Deb C, Wadsworth MH 2nd, Hughes TK, Kazer SW, Yoshimoto E, et al. Allergic inflammatory memory in human respiratory epithelial progenitor cells. Nature 2018; 560:649–54.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Thie PR, Keough GE. An Introduction to Linear Programming and Game Theory. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2008.

An edited book

Rattan SIS, Kassem M, editors. Prevention and Treatment of Age-related Diseases. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2006.

A chapter in an edited book

Fultz B, Howe J. Scattering. In: Howe J, editor. Transmission Electron Microscopy and Diffractometry of Materials. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2013. page 145–80.

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

Andrew E. Moss Revived After 1500 Years of Permafrost. IFLScience2014;

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. Federal Student Loans: Flexible Agreements with Guaranty Agencies Warrant Careful Evaluation. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2002.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Dues PM. Quantitative correlation of enterprise resource planning type, success, and technology leadership style in local government. 2010;

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. Healing and Burnout, 12 Hours at a Stretch. New York Times2001; :152.

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

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