How to format your references using the RNA citation style

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

Gammon K. 2012. Mathematical modelling: Forecasting cancer. Nature 491: S66-7.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hammock EAD, Young LJ. 2005. Microsatellite instability generates diversity in brain and sociobehavioral traits. Science 308: 1630–1634.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hanotte O, Dessie T, Kemp S. 2010. Ecology. Time to tap Africa’s livestock genomes. Science 328: 1640–1641.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Baby S, Johnson AJ, Govindan B, Lukose S, Gopakumar B, Koshy KC. 2013. UV induced visual cues in grasses. Sci Rep 3: 2738.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Peterson RL. 2016. Trading on Sentiment. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Flegel U, Bruschi D, eds. 2009. Detection of Intrusions and Malware, and Vulnerability Assessment: 6th International Conference, DIMVA 2009, Como, Italy, July 9-10, 2009. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Agostoni C. 2006. Le basi nutrizionali dell’obesità. In Salute & equilibrio nutrizionale (eds. M. Giovannini, C. Maffeis, E. Molinari, and S. Scaglioni), pp. 39–58, Springer, Milano.

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.

Blog post

O`Callaghan J. 2016. Astronomers Use “Light Echo” To Measure Size Of Star’s Disk. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/astronomers-use-light-echo-measure-size-stars-disk/ (Accessed October 30, 2018).

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. 2004. Health Care: National Strategy Needed to Accelerate the Implementation of Information Technology. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Moore J. 2012. Recall after conscious sedation for gastrointestinal endoscopic procedures and its effect on patient satisfaction. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI; Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is professor of psychology, education at the University of Chicago. His most recent book is “‘Optimal Experience’” (with Isabella Csikszentmihalyi). 1989. MORE WAYS THAN ONE TO BE GOOD. New York Times, May 28.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Gammon 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Gammon 2012; Hammock and Young 2005).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Hammock and Young 2005)
Three or more authors: (Baby et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	RNA
Abbreviation	RNA
ISSN (print)	1335-8382
ISSN (online)	1469-9001
Scope	Molecular Biology