How to format your references using the Biochemical Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Biochemical Journal. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Koshland, D. E., Jr. (2004) Crazy, but correct. Nature 432, 447
A journal article with 2 authors
1
Zuniga, A. and Zeller, R. (2014) Development. In Turing’s hands--the making of digits. Science 345, 516–517
A journal article with 3 authors
1
Hulleman, F., van Kerkwijk, M. H. and Kulkarni, S. R. (2000) An optical counterpart to the anomalous X-ray pulsar 4U0142+61. Nature 408, 689–692
A journal article with 11 or more authors
1
McMeniman, C. J., Lane, R. V., Cass, B. N., Fong, A. W. C., Sidhu, M., Wang, Y.-F., et al. (2009) Stable introduction of a life-shortening Wolbachia infection into the mosquito Aedes aegypti. Science 323, 141–144

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
1
Lavagnini, I., Magno, F., Seraglia, R. and Traldi, P. (2006) Quantitative Applications of Mass Spectrometry, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK
An edited book
1
Charushin, V. and Chupakhin, O. (Eds.). (2014) Metal Free C-H Functionalization of Aromatics: Nucleophilic Displacement of Hydrogen, Springer International Publishing, Cham
A chapter in an edited book
1
Soto, J., Campos, I. and Martínez-Máñez, R. (2013) Monitoring Wastewater Treatment Using Voltammetric Electronic Tongues. In Smart Sensors for Real-Time Water Quality Monitoring (Mukhopadhyay, S. C., and Mason, A., eds.), pp 65–103, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

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 Biochemical Journal.

Blog post
1
Luntz, S. (2014, May 7) Are Flying Cars Finally Becoming Reality? IFLScience, IFLScience https://www.iflscience.com/technology/are-flying-cars-finally-becoming-reality/

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. (1988) [Comments on Agency Participation in SBIR Program], 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
1
Nolan, S. A. (2010) Ecopoetry and ecocentrism: The poetics of Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams, Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA

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
Barron, J. (2017, August 10) In a Move Away From Tradition, Cremations Increase. New York Times

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 titleBiochemical Journal
AbbreviationBiochem. J.
ISSN (print)0264-6021
ISSN (online)1470-8728
ScopeBiochemistry
Cell Biology
Molecular Biology

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