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:

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

Westall F (2009) Geochemistry. Life on an anaerobic planet. Science 323:471–472

A journal article with 2 authors

Jacobson LD, Herbert JM (2011) Comment on “Does the hydrated electron occupy a cavity?” Science 331:1387; author reply 1387

A journal article with 3 authors

Cohen S, Zhou Z, Greenberg ME (2008) Medicine. Activating a repressor. Science 320:1172–1173

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Imamizu H, Miyauchi S, Tamada T, et al (2000) Human cerebellar activity reflecting an acquired internal model of a new tool. Nature 403:192–195

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ndjountche T (2016) Digital Electronics 3. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Plattner H, Meinel C, Leifer L (eds) (2016) Design Thinking Research: Making Design Thinking Foundational. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Greiner A, Fincke B (2015) Government Debt and Human Capital Formation. In: Fincke B (ed) Public Debt, Sustainability and Economic Growth: Theory and Empirics. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 205–232

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

Andrews R (2015) Indonesian Volcano Erupts Electric-Blue Lava. 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 (1987) ADP System: Patent Office’s Contract Renegotiation Behind Schedule. 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

Chhun S (2010) Assessing the role of vacuolar trafficking in fifteen candidate env genes at the late endosome to vacuole interface in S. cerevisiae. 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

Gustines GG (2016) At School, a ‘March’ Through the Civil Rights Movement in Visual Detail. 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 (Westall 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Westall 2009; Jacobson and Herbert 2011).

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

Two authors: (Jacobson and Herbert 2011)
Three or more authors: (Imamizu et al. 2000)

About the journal

Full journal title	Veterinary Research Communications
Abbreviation	Vet. Res. Commun.
ISSN (print)	0165-7380
ISSN (online)	1573-7446
Scope	General Medicine General Veterinary