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. Weyer S. Geochemistry. What drives iron isotope fractionation in magma? Science. 2008;320:1600–1.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Rathmell JC, Newgard CB. Biochemistry. A glucose-to-gene link. Science. 2009;324:1021–2.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Gerstner W, Sprekeler H, Deco G. Theory and simulation in neuroscience. Science. 2012;338:60–5.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Saveliev A, Everett C, Sharpe T, Webster Z, Festenstein R. DNA triplet repeats mediate heterochromatin-protein-1-sensitive variegated gene silencing. Nature. 2003;422:909–13.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Barton LL, Northup DE. Microbial Ecology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2011.

An edited book

1. Miri SJ, Lake R, Kress TM, editors. Reclaiming the Sane Society: Essays on Erich Fromm’s Thought. Rotterdam: SensePublishers; 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Lee JA, Verleysen M. Distance Preservation. In: Lee JA, Verleysen M, editors. Nonlinear Dimensionality Reduction. New York, NY: Springer; 2007. p. 69–131.

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. Andrew E. According to Stephen Hawking, black holes as we currently understand them do not exist [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2014 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/physics/according-stephen-hawking-black-holes-we-currently-understand-them-do-not-exist/

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. Software Development: Effective Practices and Federal Challenges in Applying Agile Methods. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2012 Jul. Report No.: GAO-12-681.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Stone MA. A quantitative study of perceptions of female Air Force leaders [Doctoral dissertation]. [Phoenix, AZ]: University of Phoenix; 2008.

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. Billard M. Warhol, Target: It’s All Good. New York Times. 2010 Jul 22;E5.

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