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

Marshall CR (2010) Paleontology. Marine biodiversity dynamics over deep time. Science 329:1156–1157

A journal article with 2 authors

Kim J, Holtzman DM (2010) Medicine. Prion-like behavior of amyloid-beta. Science 330:918–919

A journal article with 3 authors

Foster SL, Hargreaves DC, Medzhitov R (2007) Gene-specific control of inflammation by TLR-induced chromatin modifications. Nature 447:972–978

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Kohn D, Murrell G, Parker J, Whitehorn M (2005) What Henslow taught Darwin. Nature 436:643–645

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Davis JH (2011) Statistics for Compensation. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Frank J (ed) (2006) Electron Tomography: Methods for Three-Dimensional Visualization of Structures in the Cell, Second Edition. Springer, New York, NY

A chapter in an edited book

Heldrich C (2011) Birth Trauma. In: Ross AH, Abel SM (eds) The Juvenile Skeleton in Forensic Abuse Investigations. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ, pp 49–60

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

Fang J (2014) Five armored spiders discovered in Chinese caves. 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 (1984) GAO’s Review of Federal Efforts To Reduce Asbestos Hazards in Schools. 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

Jordan AD (2008) Measuring the efficacy of a Ninth Grade Academy on students with disabilities. Doctoral dissertation, Capella University

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

Vecsey G (2011) Pujols Won’t Find Unconditional Love Anywhere Else. New York Times B17

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Marshall 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Marshall 2010; Kim and Holtzman 2010).

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

Two authors: (Kim and Holtzman 2010)
Three or more authors: (Kohn et al. 2005)

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

Research and Writing Guides