How to format your references using the Trends in Genetics citation style

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

Scanlan, D. (2014) Ecology. Bacterial vesicles in the ocean. Science 343, 143–144

A journal article with 2 authors

Weston, E.M. and Lister, A.M. (2009) Insular dwarfism in hippos and a model for brain size reduction in Homo floresiensis. Nature 459, 85–88

A journal article with 3 authors

Letinic, K. et al. (2002) Origin of GABAergic neurons in the human neocortex. Nature 417, 645–649

A journal article with 3 or more authors

Mendillo, M. et al. (2007) The sources of sodium escaping from Io revealed by spectral high definition imaging. Nature 448, 330–332

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hayward, A. and Weare, F. (2010) Steel Detailers’ Manual, Wiley-Blackwell

An edited book

Radetzki, M., ed. (2009) Languages for Embedded Systems and their Applications: Selected Contributions on Specification, Design, and Verification from FDL’08, 36, Springer Netherlands

A chapter in an edited book

Saska, M. et al. (2014) Plume Tracking by a Self-stabilized Group of Micro Aerial Vehicles. In Modelling and Simulation for Autonomous Systems: First International Workshop, MESAS 2014, Rome, Italy, May 5-6, 2014, Revised Selected Papers (Hodicky, J., ed), pp. 44–55, Springer International Publishing

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 Trends in Genetics.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2014) “World’s Biggest Dinosaur” Discovered. IFLScience. [Online]. Available: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/“world’s-biggest-dinosaur”-discovered/. [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 (1973) Protest of NASA Contract Award, U.S. Government Printing Office

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Reece, J.K. (2017) Reservoir Facies Analysis of Middle Miocene Turbidites in Marlin, Dorado, and Nile Fields; Viosca Knoll, Deepwater Gulf of Mexico. Doctoral dissertation, University of Louisiana

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

Vecsey, G. (2011) Uncertainty in Courthouse Fogs the View at the StadiumNew York Times, D2

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	Trends in Genetics
Abbreviation	Trends Genet.
ISSN (print)	0168-9525
Scope	Genetics