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

Zurek WH (2001) Sub-Planck structure in phase space and its relevance for quantum decoherence. Nature 412:712–717

A journal article with 2 authors

Huybers P, Wunsch C (2005) Obliquity pacing of the late Pleistocene glacial terminations. Nature 434:491–494

A journal article with 3 authors

Chung K, Lee C-H, Yi G-C (2010) Transferable GaN layers grown on ZnO-coated graphene layers for optoelectronic devices. Science 330:655–657

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Im K-S, Cheong S-K, Powell CF, et al (2013) Unraveling the geometry dependence of in-nozzle cavitation in high-pressure injectors. Sci Rep 3:2067

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wolf EL, Medikonda M (2012) Understanding the Nanotechnology Revolution. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany

An edited book

Brooks AL, Brahnam S, Jain LC (eds) (2014) Technologies of Inclusive Well-Being: Serious Games, Alternative Realities, and Play Therapy. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Tahir A, MacDonell S, Buchan J (2015) A Study of the Relationship Between Class Testability and Runtime Properties. In: Maciaszek LA, Filipe J (eds) Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering: 9th International Conference, ENASE 2014, Lisbon, Portugal, April 28-30, 2014. Revised Selected Papers. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 63–78

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

Hale T (2016) Hundreds Of Laboratory-Riased Chimpanzees Are About To Experience Freedom For The First Time. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/over-200-chimpanzees-released-animal-testing-laboratory/. 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 (2010) Public Health Information Technology: Additional Strategic Planning Needed to Guide HHS’s Efforts to Establish Electronic Situational Awareness Capabilities. 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

Saldivar N (2014) Understanding the impact of AB-12 on the child welfare workforce. 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

Rothenberg B (2016) ‘A Completely Different’ Kerber Displays Calm, and Then Dominance. New York Times B11

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Zurek 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Zurek 2001; Huybers and Wunsch 2005).

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

Two authors: (Huybers and Wunsch 2005)
Three or more authors: (Im et al. 2013)

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