How to format your references using the Algorithms for Molecular Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Algorithms for Molecular Biology. 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

1. Owens B. Stroke. Nature. 2014;510:S1.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Huey RB, Ward PD. Hypoxia, global warming, and terrestrial late Permian extinctions. Science. 2005;308:398–401.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Park HH, Woo K, Ahn J-P. Core-shell bimetallic nanoparticles robustly fixed on the outermost surface of magnetic silica microspheres. Sci Rep. 2013;3:1497.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Ren H, Sigman DM, Meckler AN, Plessen B, Robinson RS, Rosenthal Y, et al. Foraminiferal isotope evidence of reduced nitrogen fixation in the ice age Atlantic Ocean. Science. 2009;323:244–8.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Smith MB. Compendium of Organic Synthetic Methods: Smith/Compendium. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2014.

An edited book

1. Deng Z, Li H, editors. Proceedings of the 2015 Chinese Intelligent Automation Conference: Intelligent Information Processing. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Lee S, Kang S. A Study on Guiding Programmers’ Code Navigation with a Graphical Code Recommender. In: Lee R, editor. Software Engineering Research,Management and Applications 2011. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2012. p. 61–75.

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 Algorithms for Molecular Biology.

Blog post

1. O`Callaghan J. The Alien Megastructure Star May Have Eaten A Planet [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2017 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/space/alien-megastructure-star-eaten-a-planet/

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

1. Government Accountability Office. Transportation Infrastructure: Major Program Revisions Present Challenges. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1992 Sep. Report No.: T-RCED-92-93.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Prejean KD. An Analysis of Corporal Punishment Practices in Texas Public Schools: Race, School District Size, Academic Performance, and Policy Influences [Doctoral dissertation]. [ Lafayette, LA]: University of Louisiana; 2015.

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

1. Vecsey G. Chef’s Choice Is Rooting for Italy, Family Style. New York Times. 2010 Jun 15;B13.

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	Algorithms for Molecular Biology
Abbreviation	Algorithms Mol. Biol.
ISSN (online)	1748-7188
Scope	Molecular Biology Structural Biology Computational Theory and Mathematics Applied Mathematics