How to format your references using the Acta Biotheoretica citation style

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

Konner M (2002) Seeking universals. Nature 415:121

A journal article with 2 authors

Casadevall A, Pirofski L-A (2014) Microbiology: Ditch the term pathogen. Nature 516:165–166

A journal article with 3 authors

Dehaene-Lambertz G, Dehaene S, Hertz-Pannier L (2002) Functional neuroimaging of speech perception in infants. Science 298:2013–2015

A journal article with 5 or more authors

O’Neill E, Rushworth L, Baccarini M, Kolch W (2004) Role of the kinase MST2 in suppression of apoptosis by the proto-oncogene product Raf-1. Science 306:2267–2270

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Khoei AR (2014) Extended Finite Element Method. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Oranje AP, Al-Mutairi N, Shwayder T (eds) (2016) Practical Pediatric Dermatology: Controversies in Diagnosis and Treatment. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Bivand RS, Pebesma E, Gómez-Rubio V (2013) Spatial Data Import and Export. In: Pebesma E, Gómez-Rubio V (eds) Applied Spatial Data Analysis with R. Springer, New York, NY, pp 83–125

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 Acta Biotheoretica.

Blog post

Andrew E (2015) Calcified Fetus Found In Woman After More Than 50 Years. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/woman-chile-has-carried-stone-baby-over-50-years/. 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 (2012) Airport and Airway Trust Fund: Factors Affecting Revenue Forecast Accuracy and Realizing Future FAA Expenditures. 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

Kang EY (2010) Late Twentieth-Century Piano Concert Etudes: A Style Study. Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati

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

Grynbaum MM (2017) Writing Partner ‘Flabbergasted’ By Accusations Against Halperin. New York Times B1

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Konner 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Konner 2002; Casadevall and Pirofski 2014).

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

Two authors: (Casadevall and Pirofski 2014)
Three or more authors: (O’Neill et al. 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	Acta Biotheoretica
Abbreviation	Acta Biotheor.
ISSN (print)	0001-5342
ISSN (online)	1572-8358
Scope	General Agricultural and Biological Sciences Philosophy General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology General Environmental Science Applied Mathematics General Medicine