How to format your references using the ACS Synthetic Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for ACS Synthetic Biology. 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 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

(1)

Schekman, R. W. Retrospective: George E. Palade (1912-2008). Science 2008, 322 (5902), 695.

A journal article with 2 authors

(1)

Pouille, F.; Scanziani, M. Routing of Spike Series by Dynamic Circuits in the Hippocampus. Nature 2004, 429 (6993), 717–723.

A journal article with 3 authors

(1)

Dekas, A. E.; Poretsky, R. S.; Orphan, V. J. Deep-Sea Archaea Fix and Share Nitrogen in Methane-Consuming Microbial Consortia. Science 2009, 326 (5951), 422–426.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

(1)

Pereira, E. R.; Kedrin, D.; Seano, G.; Gautier, O.; Meijer, E. F. J.; Jones, D.; Chin, S.-M.; Kitahara, S.; Bouta, E. M.; Chang, J.; Beech, E.; Jeong, H.-S.; Carroll, M. C.; Taghian, A. G.; Padera, T. P. Lymph Node Metastases Can Invade Local Blood Vessels, Exit the Node, and Colonize Distant Organs in Mice. Science 2018, 359 (6382), 1403–1407.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

(1)

Pétrowski, A.; Ben-Hamida, S. Evolutionary Algorithms; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ, 2017.

An edited book

(1)

Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases: European Conference, ECML PKDD 2013, Prague, Czech Republic, September 23-27, 2013, Proceedings, Part III; Blockeel, H., Kersting, K., Nijssen, S., Železný, F., Eds.; Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2013; Vol. 8190.

A chapter in an edited book

(1)

Renz, W.; Sudeikat, J. Modeling Feedback within MAS: A Systemic Approach to Organizational Dynamics. In Organized Adaption in Multi-Agent Systems: First International Workshop, OAMAS 2008, Estoril, Portugal, May 13, 2008. Revised and Invited Papers; Vouros, G., Artikis, A., Stathis, K., Pitt, J., Eds.; Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2009; pp 72–89.

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 ACS Synthetic Biology.

Blog post

(1)

Andrew, E. Higgs Physics Should Have Destroyed Universe. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/physics/higgs-physics-should-have-destroyed-universe/ (accessed 2018-10-30).

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

(1)

Government Accountability Office. Financial Management Systems: HUD Needs to Address Management and Governance Weaknesses That Jeopardize Its Modernization Efforts; GAO-16-656; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 2016.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

(1)

Mete, R. J. Can STEM Initiatives Be Social Justice Oriented: An Analysis of Urban School Reform via Smaller Learning Communities. Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD, 2010.

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

(1)

Koblin, J. Never Mind the Ratings. New York Times. August 10, 2017, p B1.

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	ACS Synthetic Biology
Abbreviation	ACS Synth. Biol.
ISSN (online)	2161-5063
Scope