How to format your references using the Veterinary Research Communications citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Veterinary Research Communications. 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.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
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
Trounson A (2012) Keith H. Campbell (1954-2012). Nature 491:193
A journal article with 2 authors
Lee J-Y, Jameson SC (2012) Immunology. Remembering to be tolerant. Science 335:667–668
A journal article with 3 authors
Sousa T, Marques GM, Domingos T (2009) Comment on “Energy uptake and allocation during ontogeny.” Science 325:1206; author reply 1206
A journal article with 5 or more authors
Shapiro NM, Campillo M, Stehly L, Ritzwoller MH (2005) High-resolution surface-wave tomography from ambient seismic noise. Science 307:1615–1618

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Bottomley GE (2011) Channel Equalization for Wireless Communications. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ
An edited book
Elgie R, Moestrup S (eds) (2016) Semi-Presidentialism in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Palgrave Macmillan UK, London
A chapter in an edited book
Strojin G (2014) Functional Simplification Through Holistic Design: The COVL Case in Slovenia. In: Contini F, Lanzara GF (eds) The Circulation of Agency in E-Justice: Interoperability and Infrastructures for European Transborder Judicial Proceedings. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp 109–136

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 Research Communications.

Blog post
Fang J (2014) Humpback Whales No Longer Threatened? In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/humpback-whales-no-longer-threatened/. 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 (1991) U.S. Airlines: Weak Financial Structure Threatens Competition. 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
Liao W (2010) The epitope specificity of the human anti-Candida albicans antibody M1g1. 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
Kenigsberg B (2017) School Life. New York Times C5

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Trounson 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Lee and Jameson 2012; Trounson 2012).

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

  • Two authors: (Lee and Jameson 2012)
  • Three or more authors: (Shapiro et al. 2005)

About the journal

Full journal titleVeterinary Research Communications
AbbreviationVet. Res. Commun.
ISSN (print)0165-7380
ISSN (online)1573-7446
ScopeGeneral Medicine
General Veterinary

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