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

Wadman M. 2007. The pain game. Nature 448: 400–401.

A journal article with 2 authors

Jacobs HO, Whitesides GM. 2001. Submicrometer patterning of charge in thin-film electrets. Science 291: 1763–1766.

A journal article with 3 authors

Field J, Cronin A, Bridge C. 2006. Future fitness and helping in social queues. Nature 441: 214–217.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Not F, Valentin K, Romari K, Lovejoy C, Massana R, Töbe K, Vaulot D, Medlin LK. 2007. Picobiliphytes: a marine picoplanktonic algal group with unknown affinities to other eukaryotes. Science 315: 253–255.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Marage J-P, Mori Y. 2013. Sonar and Underwater Acoustics. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Gilbert D, Heiner M, eds. 2012. Computational Methods in Systems Biology: 10th International Conference, CMSB 2012, London, UK, October 3-5, 2012. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

George M, Campagna M-C, Babber P, Faiz SA. 2016. Pulmonary and Airway Emergencies. In Oncologic Emergencies (eds. E.F. Manzullo, C.E. Gonzalez, C.P. Escalante, and S.-C.J. Yeung), pp. 93–111, Springer, New York, NY.

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

Andrew E. 2014. Seals And Sealions Facilitated The Spread Of Tuberculosis To The New World. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/seals-and-sealions-facilitated-spread-tuberculosis-new-world/ (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. 1997. Year 2000 Computing Crisis: Time Is Running Out for Federal Agencies to Prepare for the New Millennium. 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

Fink DC. 2017. An Exposure Assessment of Paper Dust in a Coupon Manufacturing Facility. Doctoral dissertation, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL.

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

Boot M. 2016. How the ‘Stupid Party’ Created Trump. New York Times, July 31.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Wadman 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Wadman 2007; Jacobs and Whitesides 2001).

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

Two authors: (Jacobs and Whitesides 2001)
Three or more authors: (Not et al. 2007)

About the journal

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