How to format your references using the Retina citation style

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

Diehl RA. Archaeology. Patterns of cultural primacy. Science. 2005;307(5712):1055-1056.

A journal article with 2 authors

Pizzari T, Birkhead TR. Female feral fowl eject sperm of subdominant males. Nature. 2000;405(6788):787-789.

A journal article with 3 authors

Levis RJ, Menkir GM, Rabitz H. Selective bond dissociation and rearrangement with optimally tailored, strong-field laser pulses. Science. 2001;292(5517):709-713.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Hiroi T, Abe M, Kitazato K, et al. Developing space weathering on the asteroid 25143 Itokawa. Nature. 2006;443(7107):56-58.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Levitin V. High Temperature Strain of Metals and Alloys. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA; 2005.

An edited book

Parab JS. Practical Aspects of Embedded System Design Using Microcontrollers. (Shinde SA, Shelake VG, Kamat RK, Naik GM, eds.). Springer Netherlands; 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

Baz A, Shang D, Xia F, Yakovlev A, Bystrov A. Improving the Robustness of Self-timed SRAM to Variable Vdds. In: Ayala JL, García-Cámara B, Prieto M, Ruggiero M, Sicard G, eds. Integrated Circuit and System Design. Power and Timing Modeling, Optimization, and Simulation: 21st International Workshop, PATMOS 2011, Madrid, Spain, September 26-29, 2011. Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer; 2011:32-42.

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 Retina.

Blog post

Taub B. Snails Can Make Decisions Using Just Two Brain Cells. IFLScience.

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. Railroad Safety: Engineer Work Shift Length and Schedule Variability. U.S. Government Printing Office; 1992.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Phongprasert AV. MSW Students’ Perceived Knowledge and Perceptions of Effectiveness of the Child Welfare System. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach; 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. Dreading the Thin Envelope. New York Times. April 6, 2003:145.

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	Retina
Abbreviation	Retina
ISSN (print)	0275-004X
ISSN (online)	1539-2864
Scope	General Medicine Ophthalmology