How to format your references using the Biological Procedures Online citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Biological Procedures Online. 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. Powell K. Counting the cost. Nature. 2005;434:1048–9.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Zarin DA, Tse T. Medicine. Moving toward transparency of clinical trials. Science. 2008;319:1340–2.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Thommes EW, Matsumura S, Rasio FA. Gas disks to gas giants: simulating the birth of planetary systems. Science. 2008;321:814–7.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Hynninen T, Cabailh G, Foster AS, Barth C. Defect mediated manipulation of nanoclusters on an insulator. Sci Rep. 2013;3:1270.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Braudeau E, Assi AT, Mohtar RH. Hydrostructural Pedology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2016.

An edited book

1. Basten T, Hamberg R, Reckers F, Verriet J, editors. Model-Based Design of Adaptive Embedded Systems. New York, NY: Springer; 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Burger M, Hinze M, Pinnau R. Optimization models for semiconductor dopant profiling. In: Cercignani C, Gabetta E, editors. Transport Phenomena and Kinetic Theory: Applications to Gases, Semiconductors, Photons, and Biological Systems. Boston, MA: Birkhäuser; 2007. p. 91–115.

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 Procedures Online.

Blog post

1. Andrew D. How to Make a Fire Tornado at Home [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/want-make-fire-tornado-home/

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. Technology Transfer: Administration of the Bayh-Dole Act by Research Universities. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1998 May. Report No.: RCED-98-126.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Tchen Y. An evaluation of the effectiveness of mandatory reporting of health care associated infection [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2010.

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. Vecsey G. Pelé Remains the Last Word in a Changed World. New York Times. 2010 Jun 6;SP8.

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	Biological Procedures Online
Abbreviation	Biol. Proced. Online
ISSN (online)	1480-9222
Scope	General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology