How to format your references using the Veterinary Record Open citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Veterinary Record Open (VRO). 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

Walsh CA. Peter Huttenlocher (1931-2013). Nature. 2013;502(7470):172.

A journal article with 2 authors

Arinaminpathy N, Dowdy D. Understanding the incremental value of novel diagnostic tests for tuberculosis. Nature. 2015;528(7580):S60-7.

A journal article with 3 authors

Levy ED, Landry CR, Michnick SW. Cell signaling. Signaling through cooperation. Science. 2010;328(5981):983–4.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Sun Y, Zhang W, Xing Y, Li F, Zhao Y, Xia Z, et al. High temperature superconducting FeSe films on SrTiO3 substrates. Sci Rep. 2014;4:6040.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Samara T. ERP and Information Systems. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2015.

An edited book

Figueiredo DG de. Djairo G. de Figueiredo - Selected Papers. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

Kaltenbacher B. Convergence Rates for the Iteratively Regularized Landweber Iteration in Banach Space. In: Hömberg D, Tröltzsch F, editors. System Modeling and Optimization: 25th IFIP TC 7 Conference, CSMO 2011, Berlin, Germany, September 12-16, 2011, Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2013. p. 38–48.

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 Veterinary Record Open.

Blog post

Andrew E. Genetically Modified Yeast Could Boost Health Benefits Of Wine And Reduce Hangovers. IFLScience. 2015. [Cited October 30, 2018]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/technology/gm-yeast-could-boost-health-benefits-wine-and-reduce-hangovers/.

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. The Challenge of Data Sharing: Results of a GAO-Sponsored Symposium on Benefit and Loan Programs. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2000.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Lintott RW. The manipulation of time perception in John Adams’s “Doctor Atomic.” Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD, 2010.

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

Itzkoff D, Bai M, Goldstein J, Spitznagel E, Hodgman J, Leff A, et al. The One-Page Magazine. New York Times. 2012:MM11.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

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	Veterinary Record Open
Abbreviation	Vet. Rec. Open
ISSN (online)	2052-6113
Scope