How to format your references using the Vision Research citation style

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

Jayaraman, K. S. (2002). Cutbacks cost jobs at agricultural institute. Nature, 415(6875), 949.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hilf, R. J. C., & Dutzler, R. (2009). Structure of a potentially open state of a proton-activated pentameric ligand-gated ion channel. Nature, 457(7225), 115–118.

A journal article with 3 authors

Veenstra, G. J., Weeks, D. L., & Wolffe, A. P. (2000). Distinct roles for TBP and TBP-like factor in early embryonic gene transcription in Xenopus. Science (New York, N.Y.), 290(5500), 2312–2315.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

McElreath, R., Luttbeg, B., Fogarty, S. P., Brodin, T., & Sih, A. (2007). Evolution of animal personalities. Nature, 450(7167), E5; discussion E5-6.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Venkateshan, S. P. (2015). Mechanical Measurements. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Merino, C. (Ed.). (2015). Lectures on Particle Physics, Astrophysics and Cosmology: Proceedings of the Third IDPASC School, Santiago de Compostela, Spain, January 21 -- February 2, 2013 (Vol. 161). Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Rajčáni, J., & Kúdelová, M. (2007). Murid Herpesvirus 4 (MuHV-4): An Animal Model for Human Gammaherpesvirus Research. In J. Minarovits, E. Gonczol, & T. Valyi-Nagy (Eds.), Latency Strategies of Herpesviruses (pp. 102–136). Springer US.

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 Vision Research.

Blog post

Hale, T. (2016, May 25). It May Look Pretty, But The Zika Virus Is Far From Pleasant. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/it-may-looks-pretty-zika-virus-far-pleasant/

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. (1999). Year 2000 Computing Challenge: OPM Has Made Progress on Business Continuity Planning (GGD-99-66). U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Villa, J. (2017). Multicultural Training for Mental Health Professionals Working in the Juvenile Justice System [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

Brantley, B. (2016, November 7). A Pot of Gold Has to Be Good, Right? New York Times, C1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Jayaraman, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Hilf & Dutzler, 2009; Jayaraman, 2002).

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

Two authors: (Hilf & Dutzler, 2009)
Three or more authors: (McElreath et al., 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	Vision Research
Abbreviation	Vision Res.
ISSN (print)	0042-6989
Scope	Ophthalmology Sensory Systems