How to format your references using the Biophysics Reports citation style

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

Ward MD (2003) Materials science. Molecular fuel tanks. Science 300:1104–1105

A journal article with 2 authors

Schubert EF, Kim JK (2005) Solid-state light sources getting smart. Science 308:1274–1278

A journal article with 3 authors

Hao X, Martin-Rouault L, Cui M (2014) A self-adaptive method for creating high efficiency communication channels through random scattering media. Sci Rep 4:5874

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Wang L, Ye Y, Lu X, et al (2013) Hierarchical nanocomposites of polyaniline nanowire arrays on reduced graphene oxide sheets for supercapacitors. Sci Rep 3:3568

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wren C (2011) Concise Guide to Pediatric Arrhythmias. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK

An edited book

Chiariglione L (ed) (2012) The MPEG Representation of Digital Media, 1st edn. Springer, New York, NY

A chapter in an edited book

Koh JHL, Chai CS, Wong B, Hong H-Y (2015) Design Thinking and Children. In: Chai CS, Wong B, Hong H-Y (eds) Design Thinking for Education: Conceptions and Applications in Teaching and Learning. Springer, Singapore, pp 47–66

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 Biophysics Reports.

Blog post

Andrew D (2016) What Do We Know About Marijuana’s Medical Benefits? Two Experts Explain The Evidence. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/what-do-we-know-about-marijuanas-medical-benefits-two-experts-explain-the-evidence/. 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 (1975) Automatic Data Processing Activity in the Feed Materials Production Center, Fernald, Ohio. 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

Escobedo K (2017) Sana Mente Center. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

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

Gordon M (2012) Blessed Among Women. New York Times BR14

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Ward 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Ward 2003; Schubert and Kim 2005).

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

Two authors: (Schubert and Kim 2005)
Three or more authors: (Wang et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Biophysics Reports
Abbreviation	Biophys. Rep.
ISSN (print)	2364-3439
ISSN (online)	2364-3420
Scope