How to format your references using the Biochemistry and Cell Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Biochemistry and Cell 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	Download the output style file
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

El-Azab, A. 2008. Materials science. The statistical mechanics of strain-hardened metals. Science 320(5884): 1729–1730.

A journal article with 2 authors

Piketty, T., and Saez, E. 2014. Inequality in the long run. Science 344(6186): 838–843.

A journal article with 3 authors

Isaacs, F.J., Blake, W.J., and Collins, J.J. 2005. Molecular biology. Signal processing in single cells. Science 307(5717): 1886–1888.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Meng, X., Guler, U., Kildishev, A.V., Fujita, K., Tanaka, K., and Shalaev, V.M. 2013. Unidirectional spaser in symmetry-broken plasmonic core-shell nanocavity. Sci. Rep. 3: 1241.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

d’Andria, A., and Gabarret, I. 2017. Building 21st Century Entrepreneurship. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Tahirovic, A. 2013. Passivity-Based Model Predictive Control for Mobile Vehicle Motion Planning. Edited ByG. Magnani. Springer, London.

A chapter in an edited book

Aoki, K., Murayama, S., Aoki, S., and Tashiro, S. 2016. Recognition of Reading Activities and Reading Profile of User on Japanese Text Presentation System. In Computer Supported Education: 7th International Conference, CSEDU 2015, Lisbon, Portugal, May 23-25, 2015, Revised Selected Papers. Edited by S. Zvacek, M.T. Restivo, J. Uhomoibhi, and M. Helfert. Springer International Publishing, Cham. pp. 57–80.

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 Biochemistry and Cell Biology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. 2014, October 16. Uranus-Like Planet Discovered 25,000 Light-Years Away. IFLScience. Available from https://www.iflscience.com/space/uranus-planet-discovered-25000-light-years-away/ [accessed 30 October 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. 2010. Telecommunications: Survey of State Public Utility Commissions (GAO-11-13SP, October 2010), an E-supplement to GAO-11-11. 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

Pulice, S.W. 2013. The colonized child: Love, community, and wholeness as necessary elements of education. Doctoral dissertation, Pacifica Graduate Institute, Carpinteria, 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

GEORGE GENE GUSTINES; Compiled by DAVE ITZKOFF. 2010, June 24. Man Of Steel Lands On the iPhone. New York Times: C2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (El-Azab 2008).
This sentence cites two references (El-Azab 2008; Piketty and Saez 2014).

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

Two authors: (Piketty and Saez 2014)
Three or more authors: (Meng et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Biochemistry and Cell Biology
Abbreviation	Biochem. Cell Biol.
ISSN (print)	0829-8211
ISSN (online)	1208-6002
Scope	Biochemistry Cell Biology Molecular Biology