How to format your references using the AIMS Biophysics citation style

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

Cameron A (2015) Eric H. Davidson (1937-2015). Nature 526: 196.

A journal article with 2 authors

Berkovits BD, Mayr C (2015) Alternative 3’ UTRs act as scaffolds to regulate membrane protein localization. Nature 522: 363–367.

A journal article with 3 authors

Lutz W, Sanderson W, Scherbov S (2001) The end of world population growth. Nature 412: 543–545.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Del’Haye P, Schliesser A, Arcizet O, et al. (2007) Optical frequency comb generation from a monolithic microresonator. Nature 450: 1214–1217.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Coussy O (2005) Poromechanics, Chichester, UK, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Campbell G (Ed.) (2016) Early Exchange between Africa and the Wider Indian Ocean World, Cham, Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Zarghami M, Szidarovszky F (2011) Solution of Continuous MCDA Problems, In: Szidarovszky F (Ed.), Multicriteria Analysis: Applications to Water and Environment Management, Berlin, Heidelberg, Springer, 51–76.

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 AIMS Biophysics.

Blog post

Andrew E (2015) IFLScience, The Genomic Revolution is Coming – and With it Some Big Dilemmas, 2015. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/genomic-revolution-coming-and-it-some-big-dilemmas/.

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 (1978) Bureau of Indian Affairs Not Operating Boarding Schools Efficiently, Washington, DC, U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Lenz RM (2017) Iron, Arsenic, and Elevated Salinity in the Lower Mississippi River Alluvial Aquifer of Louisiana.

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

Kelly T by J (2014) Boy of Summer. New York Times MM43.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

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	AIMS Biophysics
ISSN (online)	2377-9098
Scope