How to format your references using the Placenta citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Placenta. 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	Download the output style file
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

[1]

T.-P. Sun, Plant Science. Sex and the single fern, Science 346 (2014) 423–424.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

M.A. Majumder, C.B. Cohen, Research ethics. The NIH draft guidelines on human stem cell research, Science 324 (2009) 1648–1649.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

S. Sakuragi, K. Tominaga-Yoshino, A. Ogura, Involvement of TrkB- and p75(NTR)-signaling pathways in two contrasting forms of long-lasting synaptic plasticity, Sci. Rep. 3 (2013) 3185.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

S.-J. Kim, M. Naruse, M. Aono, M. Ohtsu, M. Hara, Decision maker based on nanoscale photo-excitation transfer, Sci. Rep. 3 (2013) 2370.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

H.-J. Zepernick, A. Finger, Pseudo Random Signal Processing, John Wiley & Sons Ltd,., West Sussex, England, 2005.

An edited book

[1]

G. Marsico, ed., Jerome S. Bruner beyond 100: Cultivating Possibilities, 1st ed. 2015, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

S.B. Vijayaraghavan, Abdominal Hernias, Volvulus and Intussusception, in: G. Maconi, G.B. Porro (Eds.), Ultrasound of the Gastrointestinal Tract, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2007: pp. 35–54.

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 Placenta.

Blog post

[1]

J. O`Callaghan, Strange “Haze” Spotted On Ceres Suggests Those Bright Spots Are Actually Made Of Ice, IFLScience (2015). https://www.iflscience.com/space/haze-ceres-suggests-those-bright-spots-are-actually-made-ice/ (accessed October 30, 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

[1]

Government Accountability Office, Air Traffic Control: Computer Capacity Shortfalls May Impair Flight Safety, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1989.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

E. De La Cruz, School social work programing for an elementary school: A grant writing project, Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 2014.

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

[1]

B. Sisario, Milestone for BMI: More Than $1 Billion in Music Royalties, New York Times (2017) B3.

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	Placenta
Abbreviation	Placenta
ISSN (print)	0143-4004
Scope	Developmental Biology Obstetrics and Gynaecology Reproductive Medicine