How to format your references using the Veterinary Record Open citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Veterinary Record Open (VRO). 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

Craelius W. The bionic man: restoring mobility. Science. 2002;295(5557):1018–21.

A journal article with 2 authors

Tan S, Lü J. Characterizing the effect of population heterogeneity on evolutionary dynamics on complex networks. Sci Rep. 2014;4:5034.

A journal article with 3 authors

Lemieux C, Otis C, Turmel M. Ancestral chloroplast genome in Mesostigma viride reveals an early branch of green plant evolution. Nature. 2000;403(6770):649–52.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Kato Y, Myers RC, Gossard AC, Awschalom DD. Coherent spin manipulation without magnetic fields in strained semiconductors. Nature. 2004;427(6969):50–3.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Tran J. The Vietnam War and Theologies of Memory. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell; 2010.

An edited book

Rutkowski L, Scherer R, Tadeusiewicz R, Zadeh LA, Zurada JM. Artifical Intelligence and Soft Computing: 10th International Conference, ICAISC 2010, Zakopane, Poland, June 13-17, 2010, Part II. vol. 6114. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2010.

A chapter in an edited book

Fu Y. ROP GTPases and the Cytoskeleton. In: Yalovsky S, Baluška F, Jones A, editors. Integrated G Proteins Signaling in Plants. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2010. p. 91–104.

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 Record Open.

Blog post

Andrew E. Current Extinction Rate 10 Times Worse Than Previously Thought. IFLScience. 2014. [Cited October 30, 2018]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/current-extinction-rate-10-times-worse-previously-thought/.

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. Information Technology: Justice Plans to Improve Oversight of Agency Projects. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2002.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Darvish H. Smart Power Grid Synchronization with Nonlinear Estimation. Doctoral dissertation, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL, 2015.

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

Prochnik G. He Remade Kings. New York Times. 2017:BR17.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

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	Veterinary Record Open
Abbreviation	Vet. Rec. Open
ISSN (online)	2052-6113
Scope