How to format your references using the Plasmid citation style

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

DeWeerdt, S., 2011. Diagnostics: a testing journey. Nature 474, S20-1.

A journal article with 2 authors

Renshaw, C.E., Schulson, E.M., 2001. Universal behaviour in compressive failure of brittle materials. Nature 412, 897–900.

A journal article with 3 authors

Wu, S.W., Ogawa, N., Ho, W., 2006. Atomic-scale coupling of photons to single-molecule junctions. Science 312, 1362–1365.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Li, B., Yang, X., Xia, L., Majeed, M.I., Tan, B., 2013. Hollow microporous organic capsules. Sci. Rep. 3, 2128.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Taylor, T.A., 2010. Guide to LEED® 2009 Estimating and Preconstruction Strategies. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Bui, A.A.T., Taira, R.K. (Eds.), 2010. Medical Imaging Informatics. Springer US, Boston, MA.

A chapter in an edited book

Mumford, J., 2013. Work Based Learning: A Structure for Learning Through Work, in: Goggins, S.P., Jahnke, I., Wulf, V. (Eds.), Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning at the Workplace: CSCL@Work. Springer US, Boston, MA, pp. 89–110.

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 Plasmid.

Blog post

Taub, B., 2016. Human Brains Are Structurally The Same As Non-Human Primate Brains [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL (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, 1969. Internal Controls Over the Automatic Data Processing System Used by the Travelers Insurance Company in Making Medicare Payments (No. 092722). 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

Romanek, J.L., 2009. The relative influence of sensation seeking and normal narcissism on academic cheating in emerging adults (Doctoral dissertation). Northcentral University, Scottsdale, AZ.

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

Crow, K., 2003. Bronze Star: Gregg LeFevre Is the City’s Busiest Public Sculptor. New York Times 148.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (DeWeerdt, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (DeWeerdt, 2011; Renshaw and Schulson, 2001).

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

Two authors: (Renshaw and Schulson, 2001)
Three or more authors: (Li et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Plasmid
Abbreviation	Plasmid
ISSN (print)	0147-619X
Scope	Molecular Biology