How to format your references using the Meta Gene citation style

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

Thomas, G.H., 2015. Evolution: An avian explosion. Nature 526, 516–517.

A journal article with 2 authors

Payne, J.L., Wagner, A., 2014. The robustness and evolvability of transcription factor binding sites. Science 343, 875–877.

A journal article with 3 authors

Zeng, G.-M., Wu, L.-A., Xing, H.-J., 2014. Symmetry restoration and quantumness reestablishment. Sci. Rep. 4, 6377.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Pfund, C., Maidl Pribbenow, C., Branchaw, J., Miller Lauffer, S., Handelsman, J., 2006. Professional skills. The merits of training mentors. Science 311, 473–474.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kumar, V., Petersen, J.A., 2012. Statistical Methods in Customer Relationship Management. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Maglaveras, N., Chouvarda, I., Koutkias, V., Brause, R. (Eds.), 2006. Biological and Medical Data Analysis: 7th International Symposium, ISBMDA 2006, Thessaloniki, Greece, December 7-8, 2006. Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Cazaux, B., Sacomoto, G., Rivals, E., 2016. Superstring Graph: A New Approach for Genome Assembly, in: Dondi, R., Fertin, G., Mauri, G. (Eds.), Algorithmic Aspects in Information and Management: 11th International Conference, AAIM 2016, Bergamo, Italy, July 18-20, 2016, Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 39–52.

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 Meta Gene.

Blog post

Luntz, S., 2014. There Are Still People Who Believe The Earth Is Flat In The USA [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/space/there-are-still-people-who-believe-earth-flat-usa/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1997. Aviation Safety: Efforts to Implement Flight Operational Quality Assurance Programs (No. RCED-98-10). 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

Roberts, M., 2017. Use of Stay Interviews as a Retention Tool for Key Talent (Doctoral dissertation). Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA.

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

Higgins, A., 2017. Putin-Era Taboo: Dissecting Roots of Nazi Sympathy. New York Times A4.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Thomas, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Payne and Wagner, 2014; Thomas, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Payne and Wagner, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Pfund et al., 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	Meta Gene
Abbreviation	Meta Gene
ISSN (print)	2214-5400
Scope	Genetics Genetics(clinical)