How to format your references using the SpringerPlus citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for SpringerPlus. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Eisenberg RS (2003) Science and the law. Patent swords and shields. Science 299:1018–1019

A journal article with 2 authors

Cooper MA, Shlaes D (2011) Fix the antibiotics pipeline. Nature 472:32

A journal article with 3 authors

Viswanathan SR, Daley GQ, Gregory RI (2008) Selective blockade of microRNA processing by Lin28. Science 320:97–100

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Wilson SI, Rydström A, Trimborn T, et al (2001) The status of Wnt signalling regulates neural and epidermal fates in the chick embryo. Nature 411:325–330

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Stokes G (2008) A Practical Guide to the Wiring Regulations. Blackwell Science Ltd, Oxford, UK

An edited book

Trautschold M (2010) iPad Made Simple. Apress, Berkeley, CA

A chapter in an edited book

Ray S, Özdemir V (2016) Angel Philanthropy and Crowdfunding to Accelerate Cancer Research in Developing World. In: Srivastava S (ed) Biomarker Discovery in the Developing World: Dissecting the Pipeline for Meeting the Challenges. Springer India, New Delhi, pp 65–71

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 SpringerPlus.

Blog post

Fang J (2015) Pillbugs May Help Buffer Damages from Global Warming. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/pillbugs-may-help-buffer-damages-global-warming/. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (2010) Next Generation Air Transportation System: Challenges with Partner Agency and FAA Coordination Continue, and Efforts to Integrate Near-, Mid-, and Long-term Activities Are Ongoing. 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

Kidder EO (2014) Self-administered HPV Testing as a Cervical Cancer Screening Option: Exploring the Perspectives of Hispanic and Arab Women in the United States. Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University

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

Wagner J (2017) Reinvigorated Astros Finish a Sweep of the Mets. New York Times D3

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Eisenberg 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Eisenberg 2003; Cooper and Shlaes 2011).

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

Two authors: (Cooper and Shlaes 2011)
Three or more authors: (Wilson et al. 2001)

About the journal

Full journal title	SpringerPlus
Abbreviation	Springerplus
ISSN (online)	2193-1801
Scope	Multidisciplinary