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:

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
Mather JC (2007) HISTORY OF SCIENCE: Science and Sputnik. Science 318:52–53
A journal article with 2 authors
Jerolmack DJ, Mohrig D (2005) Palaeoclimatology: formation of Precambrian sediment ripples. Nature 436:E1; discussion E1-2
A journal article with 3 authors
Tanimura H, Kanasaki J, Tanimura K (2014) State-resolved ultrafast dynamics of impact ionization in InSb. Sci Rep 4:6849
A journal article with 5 or more authors
Bragina A, Berg C, Müller H, et al (2013) Insights into functional bacterial diversity and its effects on Alpine bog ecosystem functioning. Sci Rep 3:1955

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Villalta T (2012) The Large-Cap Portfolio. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ
An edited book
Böhm J, Schuh H (eds) (2013) Atmospheric Effects in Space Geodesy. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
A chapter in an edited book
Wassenaar TM, Newell DG (2006) The Genus Campylobacter. In: Dworkin M, Falkow S, Rosenberg E, et al. (eds) The Prokaryotes: Volume 7: Proteobacteria: Delta, Epsilon Subclass. Springer, New York, NY, pp 119–138

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
Fang J (2014) Unevolved Galaxy Hails from the Early Universe. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/unevolved-galaxy-hails-early-universe/. 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 (1982) Evaluation of NASA Comments on Consolidated Space Operations Center. 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
Manandhar R (2017) Synthesis and Characterization of Some Novel Dinitrosyl Diphosphine Iron Complexes. Doctoral dissertation, Southern Illinois 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
Billard M (2010) At J. Crew’s Bridal Store, a Parisian Air. New York Times E6

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Mather 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Jerolmack and Mohrig 2005; Mather 2007).

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

  • Two authors: (Jerolmack and Mohrig 2005)
  • Three or more authors: (Bragina et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal titleBiological Cybernetics
AbbreviationBiol. Cybern.
ISSN (print)0340-1200
ISSN (online)1432-0770
ScopeBiotechnology
General Computer Science

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