MUW Dept. of Sciences and Mathematics
Departmental Writing Style
Style for Research Reports
(HO 402 reports, BSB 499 reports, BSM 499 reports, etc.)
The style you will use is the style used in the Research Articles sections of PLoS Biology. You should attempt to recreate as much of the structure and layout of the PLoS Biology research articles as possible.
1. Written instructions from PLoS Biology for their research article authors are available here.
2. Here are some recent Research Articles published by PLoS Biology that you can use as guides. Look at these articles in the pdf format to see the style you should use. Don’t look at the pages in the web or html format.
DNA Detection Using Recombinant Proteins by O. Piepenburg, C. Williams, D.L.. Stemple, & N.A. Armes.
Plant Volatiles, Rather than Light, Determine the Nocturnal Behavior of a Caterpillar by K. Shiojiri, R. Ozawa, & J. Takabayashi.
Resistance Evolution to Bt Crops: Predispersal Mating of European Corn Borers by A. Dalecky, S. Ponsard, R.I. Bailey, C. Pélissier, & D. Bourguet.
A Stress Surveillance System Based on Calcium and Nitric Oxide in Marine Diatoms by A. Vardi, F. Formiggini, R. Casotti, A. De Martino, F. Ribalet, A. Miralto, & C. Bowler.
Intronic Binding Sites for hnRNP A/B and hnRNP F/H Proteins Stimulate
Pre-mRNA Splicing by R. Martinez-Contreras, J. Fisette, F.H. Nasim, R. Madden, M. Cordeau, & B. Chabot
3. Here are some of the features you should pay attention to while formatting your research report.
ORGANIZATION OF SECTIONS
Put the various segments of your research report in the following order (note that methods and materials should go after all the other written sections:
Title
Name
Abstract/Summary
Introduction
Results
Discussion
Methods And Materials
References
The PLoS Biology Instructions to Authors (scroll down to "4. Preparation of manuscripts") has descriptions of what each of these sections should contain.
PAGE LAYOUT
Just use a single double-spaced column of text. You should NOT divide your page into two columns of text.
Use one inch margins on all sides of your page (top, bottom, right, left.)
Page numbers on upper left of the page
Make a title page consisting of just the article title in bold, left justified. Below that, put your name in regular font, left justified. Start the text proper on the next page.
Each page except the first page should have a running title in the page's header region consisting of author's name (Initials + surname), a colon, then a shortened title for the reprort (if your title is already short, you can use the whole title.) E.g., If your research report title is, "The " You might use as a running title on each page, "IM Student: Stem Cells"
QUOTATIONS
Do NOT use direct quotations. As a general rule, scientific writing paraphrases everything and almost never uses direct quotes. You must cite what you paraphrase, but you must not plagiarize what you paraphrase.
FIGURES
Figures should be incorporated in the middle of the text, not grouped together on separate pages at the end of the essay. Figures should be incorporated into the text as close as possible to the first reference in the text to that figure.
Number your figures sequentially. Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.
Figures should be boxed with straight lines to make it easier for the reader to know how to distinguish between the text and figures. (This is not done in PLoS Biology primer essays, but you should do it in your essays.)
All figures need a figure legend underneath the figure. The figure legend should provide enough information to be able to make sense of the figure without having to read the surrounding text.
See the sample Primer essays from PLoS Biology for examples on how to incorporate figures and how to write figure legends.
CITATIONS
When to use citations
Every statement that is not common knowledge should be referenced with a citation. In a densely written essay, sometimes virtually every sentence in the essay ends in citations. Any piece of material that you didn’t know before hand, that comes from some reference or text, must be referenced with a citation.
How to format citations
Use numbers in square parentheses for your citations. E.g., “[4].” Do not put periods inside the parentheses.
Number your citations sequentially in the order they appear in the text. The first reference you cite is [1], the second reference you cite is [2], etc. If you cite the same reference more than once, use the same number each time. That is, once you decide a particular reference is “[7]”, use [7] each time you cite it.
Citations usually go at the end of the sentence. E.g., “Strigolactones belong to the sesquiterpene lactones, which are believed to have a wide distribution in the plant kingdom [11].”
If, however, you have a sentence that contains information from more than one reference, you can put the citation in the middle of the sentence. E.g., “The Glomeromycota are considered the fifth fungal phylum [1] and their common ancestor dates back 600 million years [7], yet all of these fungi exist in symbiosis with phototrophic organisms.”
How to refer to authors being cited
You can occasionally put the name of the author(s) of a reference, followed by a citation, before summarising the information from that reference, but don’t overdo this sort of thing as it begins to sound affected if used too much. Only use the authors' surnames, not their first names or even initials. Do not give them a title or description.
The following is an example of how to properly identify authors:
"Recently, Akiyama et al. [10] provided a major breakthrough in our understanding of the very early recognition events in this process."
The following are examples of how NOT to identify authors unless the striked-out sections are removed:
"Recently
Dr. K. Akiyama and colleagues at Oksaka Prefecture UniversityAkiyama et al. [10] provided...""Recently
three scientists in Japan named Akiyama, Matsuzaki, and HayashiAkiyama et al. [10] provided..."
Citations do not replace author names
If you are going to put citations in the middle of your sentences, the sentence must still be comprehensible when the citation is read out loud without the citation numbers. Do NOT leave out information that would identify the reference in the absence of the citation number. So, do NOT write a sentence like, "Recently [10] provided a major breakthrough...". Instead, write, "“Recently, Akiyama et al. [10] provided a major breakthrough..."
More than one citation in a single sentence
If a sentence contains information that is repeated in more than one reference, you indicate that more than one reference was used in the following manner:
two references used: [3,8]
three or more consecutively numbered references used: [5-9]
three or more non-consecutively numbered references used: [5, 8, 12, 20]
Note that if multiple references are cited, you always put the citation numbers in order from smallest to largest.
Entire paragraphs taken from a single reference
If you are using a lot of information within a single paragraph from a single reference, you need to cite that reference for each separate piece of information. Note that if you over-rely on a single reference, it becomes immediately apparent because your paragraphs cite the same source over and over again. In general, this is considered poor form and you should make an effort to find other sources of your information if your paragraph looks like this:
“The heart is located in the thoracic cavity [5]. It consists of four chambers [5]. The upper two chambers are called atria, and the lower two chambers are called ventricles [5]. The left atrium is separated from the left ventricle with a valve called the bicuspidal valve [5]."
All quoted examples of proper citation style were taken from a PLoS Primer essay by Brachmann and Parniske.
REFERENCES
REFERENCE FORMAT.
See the sample Primer essays from PLoS Biology for examples on how to lay out and format your references.
References should be listed at the end of your essay. There should be a left-justified sub-heading of “References” before your reference list begins.
References should be listed in numerical order by the citation number used to identify them in the text.
All authors should be listed by initials and surname, unless there are more than five authors, in which case only list the first five authors followed by “et al.” Separate different authors with commas. Do not separate surnames and initials with commas. Do not use “and” before the last author.
The full title of the reference should be listed. Do not put the title in quotes.
Use the accepted abbreviations for journal titles. Do not use periods after the abbreviations in the title. For instance the official abbreviation for the Journal of Biological Chemistry is J Biol Chem, not J. Biol. Chem. Note that some journal titles aren't abbreviated (e.g., Nature), but most are.
If you don't know the accepted abbreviation, look up the article in PubMed. The PubMed citation will give the journal title in the form of its accepted abbreviation. However, do not just copy the entire PubMed citation. They use a different style that we do; just use PubMed to determine the accepted journal abbreviation (and, if needed, information on the authors, year, title, volume, and pages -- just reformat them to fit our deparmental style.)
The second and third lines of a reference should be indented to line up with the beginning of the text on the first line.
Journal Articles
For journal articles, accepted abbreviations can be used for journal titles. Give the volume number of the journal, but do not give the issue number or date. Give the beginning and end pages of the article, but don’t use “pp” or “pg”.
For journal articles that are available both online and in print (hard copy), always format your reference as if you had obtained the article from the print version of the journal. So, even if you go online to read a Nature article, you still format it so the citation includes the journal volume and page numbers, and you do not include the URL or the date accessed. If your online copy of the journal article does not provide the information you need in your citation, look the article up in PubMed. The PubMed listing will give the volume number, the page numbers of the print copy, etc. Use that information in your citation, even if your online copy wasn't formatted that way.
Journal articles found online
For journal articles that are available both online and in print (hard copy), always format your reference as if you had obtained the article from the print version of the journal. So, even if you go online to read a Nature article, you still format it so the citation includes the journal volume and page numbers, and you do not include the URL or the date accessed. If your online copy of the journal article does not provide the information you need in your citation, look the article up in PubMed. The PubMed listing will give the volume number, the page numbers of the print copy, etc. Use that information in your citation, even if your online copy wasn't formatted that way.
For journal articles that are only available online, the online journal will still provide both a volume number for the article and page numbers for the article. Format your reference in the same style as for an article from a print journal with authors, year, title, journal name, volume and page numbers. Do not put the URL or the date accessed info.
Web Pages
For web pages that aren't online journal articles, you need to provide the author's name (if known) , date of publication or last revision in parentheses, title of document, title of complete work (if relevant), URL in angle brackets, and very importantly the date (year month day, in that order) when you actually viewed/read the page. This last information is the “date of access” and is formatted "Accessed year month day."
The formatting of your citation will be some variation of this:
Daneholt B (2006) Advanced Information: The 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: RNA Interference. <http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2006/adv.html>. Accessed 2007 Jan 4.
If the author, document title, and date of last revision are not written on the web page itself (look at the top and at the very bottom of the page; look at the title on the top of your browser window), try right-clicking on the page on choosing "Page Info". This won't work with all browsers, but is worth trying. If some of the information (such as author) just is not available, leave it out and go to the next item in the list of information to include in the reference.
This style of formatting web page citations is a modified version of the basic format suggested by the Council for Biological Editors (CBE).
Books
For information taken from books, give the page number where the information you are citing can be found in the book. Don’t give the total number of pages for the book. If the article is from a chapter in a book where every chapter is by different authors, give the chapter title, the book title, the editors of the book, and the page numbers of the chapter (use “pp” to indicate chapter pages.) Give the city where the book was published (but do not give the state), followed by a colon, followed by the name of the publishing company.
REFERENCE EXAMPLES
journal articles:
5. Redecker D, Kodner R, Graham LE (2000) Glomalean fungi from the Ordovician. Science 289: 1920–1921.
electronic or online journal articles
6. Brachmann A, Parniske M (2006) The most widespread symbiosis on earth. PLoS Biol 4: 1111-1112.
book
7. Chase JM, Leibold MA (2003) Ecological niches: Linking classical and contemporary approaches. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 212.
chapter in book
9. Simberloff D (1997) Eradication. In: Simberloff D, Schmitz DC, Brown TC, editors. Strangers in paradise: impact and management of nonindigenous species in Florida. Washington (D. C.): Island Press. pp. 221–228.
web pages that aren’t online journal articles
10. Daneholt B (2006) Advanced Information: The 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine: RNA Interference. <http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2006/adv.html>. Accessed 2007 Jan 4.
11. (2003) CBE home page. <http://www.councilscienceeditors.org>. Accessed 2006 Sept 5.
4. You might want to look through the PLoS Biology archives to find an article similar in theme or content to the report you are writing, to give you a better idea of how to deal with some of the formatting issues you will be encountering.
Return to Writing Style Overview page
written by: Ross E Whitwam
last updated: 19 June 2009