How to format your references using the Current Opinion in Virology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Current Opinion in Virology. 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Manning CE: Geochemistry. Sulfur surprises in deep geological fluids. Science 2011, 331:1018–1019.

A journal article with 2 authors

Sheth U, Parker R: Decapping and decay of messenger RNA occur in cytoplasmic processing bodies. Science 2003, 300:805–808.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hess KL, Corda CJ, Lanese KM: SPORE series winner. Science Buddies: advancing informal science education. Science 2011, 332:550–551.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Nikolov N, Sing DK, Fortney JJ, Goyal JM, Drummond B, Evans TM, Gibson NP, De Mooij EJW, Rustamkulov Z, Wakeford HR, et al.: An absolute sodium abundance for a cloud-free “hot Saturn” exoplanet. Nature 2018, 557:526–529.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Dvorak R, Lhotka C: Celestial Dynamics. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA; 2013.

An edited book

Kaltschmitt M, Streicher W, Wiese A (Eds): Renewable Energy: Technology, and Environment Economics. Springer; 2007.

A chapter in an edited book

Gavanelli M, Rossi F: Constraint Logic Programming. In A 25-Year Perspective on Logic Programming: Achievements of the Italian Association for Logic Programming, GULP. Edited by Dovier A, Pontelli E. Springer; 2010:64–86.

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 Current Opinion in Virology.

Blog post

Andrews R: How To See Tonight’s Peak Of The Eta Aquariid Meteor Shower. IFLScience 2017,

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: Missouri River Navigation: Data on Commodity Shipments for Four States Served by the Missouri River and Two States Served by Both the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. U.S. Government Printing Office; 2009.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Seevaratnam N: Forecasting Optimality in Resource Utilization for Cloud Computing Systems to Maximize Quality of Service. 2019,

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

(nyt) SK: World Briefing | Europe: Russia: Kursk Fragments Recovered. New York Times 2002,

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	Current Opinion in Virology
Abbreviation	Curr. Opin. Virol.
ISSN (print)	1879-6257
ISSN (online)	1879-6265
Scope	Virology