How to format your references using the Veterinary Research Communications citation style

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

Mungiu-Pippidi A (2015) Corruption: Good governance powers innovation. Nature 518:295–297

A journal article with 2 authors

Mercer JM, Roth VL (2003) The effects of Cenozoic global change on squirrel phylogeny. Science 299:1568–1572

A journal article with 3 authors

Mochizuki K, Matsumoto M, Ohmine I (2013) Defect pair separation as the controlling step in homogeneous ice melting. Nature 498:350–354

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Jaganathan H, Gage J, Leonard F, et al (2014) Three-dimensional in vitro co-culture model of breast tumor using magnetic levitation. Sci Rep 4:6468

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Mitra A (2008) Fundamentals of Quality Control and Improvement. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Chen L, Mitchell C (eds) (2014) Security Standardisation Research: First International Conference, SSR 2014, London, UK, December 16-17, 2014. Proceedings. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Caccavale F, Iamarino M, Pierri F, Tufano V (2011) Thermal Stability. In: Iamarino M, Pierri F, Tufano V (eds) Control and Monitoring of Chemical Batch Reactors. Springer, London, pp 69–88

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 Research Communications.

Blog post

Andrews R (2015) Ebola Confirmed To Be Sexually Transmitted Disease. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/ebola-confirmed-be-sexually-transmitted-disease/. Accessed 30 Oct 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

Government Accountability Office (1997) Health, Education and Human Services Information Systems Issue Area--Active Assignments. 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

Reese SR (2012) Transitioning to the oboe: Methods and resources to assist in switching to the oboe from other woodwind instruments. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

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

Sisario B (2016) Big Opening for J. Cole as Album Makes No. 1. New York Times C3

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Mungiu-Pippidi 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Mercer and Roth 2003; Mungiu-Pippidi 2015).

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

Two authors: (Mercer and Roth 2003)
Three or more authors: (Jaganathan et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Veterinary Research Communications
Abbreviation	Vet. Res. Commun.
ISSN (print)	0165-7380
ISSN (online)	1573-7446
Scope	General Medicine General Veterinary