How to format your references using the Biological Cybernetics citation style

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

Blelloch R (2009) Journal club. A computational biologist looks at how mRNA length changes during development. Nature 462:141

A journal article with 2 authors

Jansen M, Letschert HP (2000) Inorganic yellow-red pigments without toxic metals. Nature 404:980–982

A journal article with 3 authors

Wada-Katsumata A, Silverman J, Schal C (2013) Changes in taste neurons support the emergence of an adaptive behavior in cockroaches. Science 340:972–975

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Tchao J, Han L, Lin B, et al (2014) Combined biophysical and soluble factor modulation induces cardiomyocyte differentiation from human muscle derived stem cells. Sci Rep 4:6614

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Walkenbach J (2010) Excel® VBA Programming For Dummies®. Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, IN, USA

An edited book

Mazzone L, Vitiello B (eds) (2016) Psychiatric Symptoms and Comorbidities in Autism Spectrum Disorder. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Zhang K, Shen X (2015) Health Data Sharing with Misbehavior Detection. In: Shen X (sherman) (ed) Security and Privacy for Mobile Healthcare Networks. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 47–80

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 Biological Cybernetics.

Blog post

Andrew E (2013) Has climate change “paused”? Nope. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/has-climate-change-paused-nope/. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (1996) Resources, Community, and Economic Development Information Systems Issue Area: Active Assignments. 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

RinconGallardo TJ (2010) The effect of the use of learning journals on the development of metacognition in undergraduate students. Doctoral dissertation, Capella University

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

Weber B (2016) Henry Worsley, a British Adventurer Trying to Cross Antarctica, Dies at 55. New York Times A24

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Blelloch 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Jansen and Letschert 2000; Blelloch 2009).

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

Two authors: (Jansen and Letschert 2000)
Three or more authors: (Tchao et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Biological Cybernetics
Abbreviation	Biol. Cybern.
ISSN (print)	0340-1200
ISSN (online)	1432-0770
Scope	Biotechnology General Computer Science