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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Veterinary 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Seewald, J.S., 2003. Organic-inorganic interactions in petroleum-producing sedimentary basins. Nature 426, 327–333.
A journal article with 2 authors
Lukas, D., Clutton-Brock, T.H., 2013. The evolution of social monogamy in mammals. Science 341, 526–530.
A journal article with 3 authors
García-Ruiz, J.M., Melero-García, E., Hyde, S.T., 2009. Morphogenesis of self-assembled nanocrystalline materials of barium carbonate and silica. Science 323, 362–365.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Sato, T., Kamiyama, T., Takahashi, T., Kurahashi, K., Yamada, K., 2001. Observation of d(x2-y2)-like superconducting gap in an electron-doped high-temperature superconductor. Science 291, 1517–1519.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Pascoe, N., 2011. Reliability Technology. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.
An edited book
Hof, M., Hutterer, R., Fidler, V. (Eds.), 2005. Fluorescence Spectroscopy in Biology: Advanced Methods and their Applications to Membranes, Proteins, DNA, and Cells, Springer Series on Fluorescence, Methods and Applications. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
A chapter in an edited book
Mobarek, A., Mollah, S., 2016. Determinants of Market Co-Movement in Developed and Emerging Markets, in: Mollah, S. (Ed.), Global Stock Market Integration: Co-Movement, Crises, and Efficiency in Developed and Emerging Markets. Palgrave Macmillan US, New York, NY, pp. 99–113.

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 Veterinary Journal.

Blog post
Davis, J., 2015. Trial Shows Promise For A “Universal” Flu Vaccine [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/experiments-mice-have-shown-promise-universal-flu-vaccine/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1988. Guaranteed Student Loans: Lenders’ Interest Billings Often Result in Overpayments (No. HRD-88-72). 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
Wager, L., 2009. Racial differences in the relationship between child externalizing and corporal punishment: The role of other discipline strategies (Doctoral dissertation). Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.

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
Kelly, T. by J., 2014. Boy of Summer. New York Times MM43.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Seewald, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Lukas and Clutton-Brock, 2013; Seewald, 2003).

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

  • Two authors: (Lukas and Clutton-Brock, 2013)
  • Three or more authors: (Sato et al., 2001)

About the journal

Full journal titleThe Veterinary Journal
AbbreviationVet. J.
ISSN (print)1090-0233
ScopeAnimal Science and Zoology
General Veterinary

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