How to format your references using the RNA Biology citation style

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

Smil V. Genius loci. Nature 2001; 409:21.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kneller EA, van Keken PE. Trench-parallel flow and seismic anisotropy in the Mariana and Andean subduction systems. Nature 2007; 450:1222–5.

A journal article with 3 authors

Arita I, Nakane M, Fenner F. Public health. Is polio eradication realistic? Science 2006; 312:852–4.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Zhang H, Liu S, Yuan W, Dong W, Ye A, Xie X, Chen Y, Liu D, Cai W, Mao Y. Inclusion of soil carbon lateral movement alters terrestrial carbon budget in China. Sci Rep 2014; 4:7247.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Cox I, Gaudard MA, Stephens ML. Visual Six Sigma, Second Edition. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2016.

An edited book

Tamin MN. Solder Joint Reliability Assessment: Finite Element Simulation Methodology. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

Selvi SSD, Vivek SS, Shukla D, Rangan Chandrasekaran P. Efficient and Provably Secure Certificateless Multi-receiver Signcryption. In: Baek J, Bao F, Chen K, Lai X, editors. Provable Security: Second International Conference, ProvSec 2008, Shanghai, China, October 30 - November 1, 2008. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2008. page 52–67.

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 RNA Biology.

Blog post

Andrews R. “Maleness Gene” Could Be Key To Destroying Malaria Mosquitos. IFLScience2016;

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. Problems Persist in Justice’s ADP Management and Organizations. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1990.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Richardson RS. A phenomenological hermeneutic study of radiology. 2015;

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

Saslow L. Helping the Games, and the Shows, to Go On. New York Times2008; :LI6.

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	RNA Biology
Abbreviation	RNA Biol.
ISSN (print)	1547-6286
ISSN (online)	1555-8584
Scope	Cell Biology Molecular Biology

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