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. Gabbaï FP. Chemistry. Lewis acids with a difference. Science. 2013;341:1348–9.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Hekimi S, Guarente L. Genetics and the specificity of the aging process. Science. 2003;299:1351–4.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Qin Y, Wang X, Wang ZL. Microfibre-nanowire hybrid structure for energy scavenging. Nature. 2008;451:809–13.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Bouillard J-S, Segovia P, Dickson W, Wurtz GA, Zayats AV. Shaping plasmon beams via the controlled illumination of finite-size plasmonic crystals. Sci Rep. 2014;4:7234.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Kondrashov AS. Crumbling Genome. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2017.

An edited book

1. Clark JL, Speth JD, editors. Zooarchaeology and Modern Human Origins: Human Hunting Behavior during the Later Pleistocene. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Cuzzocrea A. CAMS: OLAPing Multidimensional Data Streams Efficiently. In: Pedersen TB, Mohania MK, Tjoa AM, editors. Data Warehousing and Knowledge Discovery: 11th International Conference, DaWaK 2009 Linz, Austria, August 31–September 2, 2009 Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2009. p. 48–62.

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. Andrews R. Anti-Landmine Drone Built By Indian Teenager Receives $730,000 Grant [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2017 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/technology/antilandmine-drone-built-indian-teenage-receives-730000-grant/

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. [Comments on Proposed Changes to DAR Cost Principles and Internal Procedures]. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1982 Nov. Report No.: B-208536.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Kramer JA. Accurate Localization Given Uncertain Sensors [Doctoral dissertation]. [Tampa, FL]: University of South Florida; 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. Kenigsberg B. The Revolution Will Be Filmed. New York Times. 2017 Jun 27;C4.

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