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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Peng RD (2011) Reproducible research in computational science. Science 334:1226–1227

A journal article with 2 authors

Mitchell-Olds T, Schmitt J (2006) Genetic mechanisms and evolutionary significance of natural variation in Arabidopsis. Nature 441:947–952

A journal article with 3 authors

Alford RA, Bradfield KS, Richards SJ (2007) Ecology: global warming and amphibian losses. Nature 447:E3-4; discussion E5-6

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Zhang W, Ronneberger I, Zalden P, et al (2014) How fragility makes phase-change data storage robust: insights from ab initio simulations. Sci Rep 4:6529

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Maksoud MA (2017) Quick Reference to Dental Implant Surgery. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Gen M, Kim KJ, Huang X, Hiroshi Y (eds) (2015) Industrial Engineering, Management Science and Applications 2015. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Apsel A, Wang X, Dokania R (2014) Pulse Coupled Oscillator Networks. In: Wang X, Dokania R (eds) Design of Ultra-Low Power Impulse Radios. Springer, New York, NY, pp 77–93

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) Iceland Volcano Erupts After Weeks of Unrest. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/iceland-volcano-erupts-after-weeks-unrest/. 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 (1996) Transportation Infrastructure: Central Artery/Tunnel Project Faces Financial Uncertainties. 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

Peterson NR (2015) Subspecies composition, genetic variation and structure of Largemouth Bass in Puerto Rico reservoirs. Doctoral dissertation, Mississippi State 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

Gustines GG (2014) Leaping From Marvel to DC in a Single Bound. New York Times C3

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Peng 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Mitchell-Olds and Schmitt 2006; Peng 2011).

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

Two authors: (Mitchell-Olds and Schmitt 2006)
Three or more authors: (Zhang et al. 2014)

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