How to format your references using the Retrovirology citation style

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

1. Sternberg PW. Developmental biology. A pattern of precision. Science. 2004;303:637–8.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Ihinger PD, Zink SI. Determination of relative growth rates of natural quartz crystals. Nature. 2000;404:865–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Rohr RP, Saavedra S, Bascompte J. Ecological networks. On the structural stability of mutualistic systems. Science. 2014;345:1253497.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Moehring DL, Maunz P, Olmschenk S, Younge KC, Matsukevich DN, Duan L-M, et al. Entanglement of single-atom quantum bits at a distance. Nature. 2007;449:68–71.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Kay R. Statistical Thinking for Non-Statisticians in Drug Regulation. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2014.

An edited book

1. Vaidyanathan S, Harrigan GG, Goodacre R, editors. Metabolome Analyses: Strategies for Systems Biology. Boston, MA: Springer US; 2005.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Chen C, Zhu S, Guan X, Shen X. Consensus-Based Optimal Target Tracking in Relay Assisted Wireless Sensor Networks. In: Zhu S, Guan X, Shen X (sherman), editors. Wireless Sensor Networks: Distributed Consensus Estimation. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2014. p. 41–64.

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 Retrovirology.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Musician Composes Pi Song On Piano. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2014.

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

1. Government Accountability Office. Unanswered Questions on Educating Handicapped Children in Local Public Schools. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1981 Feb. Report No.: HRD-81-43.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Turpie KR. Enhancement of a canopy reflectance model for understanding the specular and spectral effects of an aquatic background in an inundated tidal marsh [Doctoral dissertation]. [College Park, MD]: University of Maryland, College Park; 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

1. O’connell ME. The Questions Brennan Can’t Dodge. New York Times. 2013 Feb 7;A27.

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	Retrovirology
Abbreviation	Retrovirology
ISSN (online)	1742-4690
Scope	Virology Infectious Diseases