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. Ritvo H. Essays on science and society. Fighting for Thirlmere--the roots of environmentalism. Science. 2003;300:1510–1.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Hanrieder J, Ewing AG. Spatial elucidation of spinal cord lipid- and metabolite- regulations in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Sci Rep. 2014;4:5266.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Wong KM, Suchard MA, Huelsenbeck JP. Alignment uncertainty and genomic analysis. Science. 2008;319:473–6.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Ho GC, Krimigis SM, Gold RE, Baker DN, Slavin JA, Anderson BJ, et al. MESSENGER observations of transient bursts of energetic electrons in Mercury’s magnetosphere. Science. 2011;333:1865–8.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Dunne RA. A Statistical Approach to Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2006.

An edited book

1. Pihlström S. Kantian Antitheodicy: Philosophical and Literary Varieties. Kivistö S, editor. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Ammann M. Participation in Schools – a Classification Concept. In: Weber WG, Thoma M, Ostendorf A, Chisholm L, editors. Democratic Competences and Social Practices in Organizations. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften; 2012. p. 47–61.

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. Fang J. Even Death Doesn’t Stop Geckos From Sticking To The Walls [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2014 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/death-will-not-stop-geckos-sticking-walls/

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. FAA’s Implementation of the Expanded East Coast Plan. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1988 May. Report No.: T-RCED-88-39.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Ekici T. An Investigation of Credit Card Debt: The Effect of Price and Income Expectations and the Impact on Consumption [Doctoral dissertation]. [Columbus, OH]: Ohio State University; 2006.

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. Grynbaum MM. CNN Severs Its Ties With a Host After His Vulgar Criticism of Trump. New York Times. 2017 Jun 9;B3.

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