How to format your references using the 3 Biotech citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for 3 Biotech. 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 references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles 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

Dixit V (2011) Jürg Tschopp (1951-2011). Nature 472:296

A journal article with 2 authors

Berg P, Lehman IR (2007) Retrospective: Arthur Kornberg (1918-2007). Science 318:1564

A journal article with 3 authors

Assender H, Bliznyuk V, Porfyrakis K (2002) How surface topography relates to materials’ properties. Science 297:973–976

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Chuine I, Yiou P, Viovy N, et al (2004) Historical phenology: grape ripening as a past climate indicator. Nature 432:289–290

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ganda KM (2013) Dentist’s Guide to Medical Conditions, Medications, and Complications. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Broadbent J, Brockman V (eds) (2011) East Asian Social Movements: Power, Protest, and Change in a Dynamic Region. Springer, New York, NY

A chapter in an edited book

Delepoulle S, Renaud C, Chelle M (2009) Improving Light Position in a Growth Chamber through the Use of a Genetic Algorithm. In: Plemenos D, Miaoulis G (eds) Artificial Intelligence Techniques for Computer Graphics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 67–82

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 3 Biotech.

Blog post

Taub B (2016) Avian Malaria Wipes Out UK Zoo’s Entire Colony Of Penguins. In: IFLScience. 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 (1979) Energy Information Administration’s Proposed Energy Company Financial Reporting System Collection Form. 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

Gleason R (2013) Nanosphere lithography applied to magnetic thin films. 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

Kelly C (1999) The Sailors Of Winter: In the Cold, Cold Sea. New York Times 812

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Dixit 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Berg and Lehman 2007; Dixit 2011).

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

Two authors: (Berg and Lehman 2007)
Three or more authors: (Chuine et al. 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	3 Biotech
Abbreviation	3 Biotech
ISSN (print)	2190-572X
ISSN (online)	2190-5738
Scope	Agricultural and Biological Sciences (miscellaneous) Biotechnology Environmental Science (miscellaneous)

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