How to format your references using the BioSystems citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BioSystems. 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
Diehl, R.A., 2005. Archaeology. Patterns of cultural primacy. Science 307, 1055–1056.
A journal article with 2 authors
Brookmeyer, R., Blades, N., 2002. Prevention of inhalational anthrax in the U.S. outbreak. Science 295, 1861.
A journal article with 3 authors
Grima, J.N., Attard, D., Gatt, R., 2011. Materials science. Unusual thermoelastic properties of methanol monohydrate. Science 331, 687–688.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Gaudinier, A., Rodriguez-Medina, J., Zhang, L., Olson, A., Liseron-Monfils, C., Bågman, A.-M., Foret, J., Abbitt, S., Tang, M., Li, B., Runcie, D.E., Kliebenstein, D.J., Shen, B., Frank, M.J., Ware, D., Brady, S.M., 2018. Transcriptional regulation of nitrogen-associated metabolism and growth. Nature 563, 259–264.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Pagliaro, M., 2010. Nano-Age. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany.
An edited book
Ye, J., Cundiff, S.T. (Eds.), 2005. Femtosecond Optical Frequency Comb: Principle, Operation, and Applications. Springer US, Boston, MA.
A chapter in an edited book
Steinhauer, C., Forthmann, C., Jungmann, R., Vogelsang, J., Simmel, F.C., Tinnefeld, P., 2011. Nanoscopy Using Localization and Temporal Separation of Fluorescence From Single Molecules, in: Bartolo, B.D., Collins, J. (Eds.), Biophotonics: Spectroscopy, Imaging, Sensing, and Manipulation, NATO Science for Peace and Security Series B: Physics and Biophysics. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp. 87–106.

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 BioSystems.

Blog post
Andrew, E., 2015. Scientists Can Tell How Old A Star Is Based On How Fast It’s Spinning [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/space/scientists-age-stars-based-their-spin/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 2011. Public Radio and the Role of Federal Funding (No. GAO-11-669R). 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
Matthews, L.K., 2016. The impact of trait displaced aggression and social support on cardiovascular reactivity (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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
Shear, M.D., Steinhauer, J., Flegenheimer, M., 2017. Sense of Crisis Deepens as Trump Defends F.B.I. Firing. New York Times A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Diehl, 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Brookmeyer and Blades, 2002; Diehl, 2005).

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

  • Two authors: (Brookmeyer and Blades, 2002)
  • Three or more authors: (Gaudinier et al., 2018)

About the journal

Full journal titleBioSystems
AbbreviationBiosystems.
ISSN (print)0303-2647
ScopeGeneral Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
Applied Mathematics
Modelling and Simulation
Statistics and Probability
General Medicine

Other styles