How to format your references using the The Protein Journal citation style

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

Sohl F (2010) Planetary science. Revealing Titan’s interior. Science 327:1338–1339

A journal article with 2 authors

Cooper BG, Goller F (2004) Multimodal signals: enhancement and constraint of song motor patterns by visual display. Science 303:544–546

A journal article with 3 authors

Palla G, Barabási A-L, Vicsek T (2007) Quantifying social group evolution. Nature 446:664–667

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Matsuzawa A, Tseng P-H, Vallabhapurapu S, et al (2008) Essential cytoplasmic translocation of a cytokine receptor-assembled signaling complex. Science 321:663–668

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Todinov MT (2005) Reliability and Risk Models. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Demetrikopoulos MK, Pecore JL (2016) Interplay of Creativity and Giftedness in Science. SensePublishers, Rotterdam

A chapter in an edited book

Carlson DL (2012) The Rituals of Everyday Life. In: Carlson DL (ed) Volunteers of America. SensePublishers, Rotterdam, pp 69–86

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 The Protein Journal.

Blog post

Hale T (2016) Loneliness Could Be In Your DNA. In: IFLScience. 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 (1978) Update of Economic Analysis of Impact Aid Program Reflecting the Educational Amendments of 1974. 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

Bishop S (2015) The impact of attachment and social support on parents of children with autism. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

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

Pilon M (2014) American Is Suspended. New York Times B12

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	The Protein Journal
Abbreviation	J. Protein Chem.
ISSN (print)	1572-3887
ISSN (online)	1573-4943
Scope	Biochemistry Bioengineering Analytical Chemistry Organic Chemistry