How to format your references using the Biosystems Engineering citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Biosystems Engineering. 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	Download the output style file
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

Onnela, J.-P. J. P. (2014). Physics. Flow of control in networks. Science (New York, N.Y.), 343(6177), 1325–1326.

A journal article with 2 authors

DeKosky, S. T., & Marek, K. (2003). Looking backward to move forward: early detection of neurodegenerative disorders. Science (New York, N.Y.), 302(5646), 830–834.

A journal article with 3 authors

Chakraborty, P., Gioia, G., & Kieffer, S. W. (2009). Volcanic mesocyclones. Nature, 458(7237), 497–500.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Burioni, R., Casartelli, M., di Volo, M., Livi, R., & Vezzani, A. (2014). Average synaptic activity and neural networks topology: a global inverse problem. Scientific Reports, 4, 4336.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Burkinshaw, S. M. (2016). Physico-chemical Aspects of Textile Coloration. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Cai, Z., Tong, H., Kang, Z., & Liu, Y. (Eds.). (2010). Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Systems: 5th International Symposium, ISICA 2010, Wuhan, China, October 22-24, 2010. Proceedings (Vol. 107). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Mandal, P., Verma, N., Azad, G. K., Singh, V., Golla, U., & Tomar, R. S. (2014). Epigenetics: Role of Histone Proteases in Cellular Functions and Diseases. In N. Maulik & T. Karagiannis (Eds.), Molecular mechanisms and physiology of disease: Implications for Epigenetics and Health (pp. 113–126). Springer.

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 Engineering.

Blog post

Fang, J. (2014, April 15). Ancient Martian Air Too Thin for Liquid Water. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/ancient-martian-air-too-thin-liquid-water/

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. (1989). Close Air Support: Comparison of Air Force and Marine Corps Requirements and Aircraft (NSIAD-89-218). U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Andrews, A. (2013). Yoga as mental health treatment for cancer survivors: A grant proposal [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

(nyt), S. K. (2002, April 6). World Briefing | Asia: Russia: Journalist’s Body Found. New York Times, A10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Onnela, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (DeKosky & Marek, 2003; Onnela, 2014).

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

Two authors: (DeKosky & Marek, 2003)
Three authors: (Chakraborty et al., 2009)
6 or more authors: (Burioni et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Biosystems Engineering
Abbreviation	Biosyst. Eng.
ISSN (print)	1537-5110
Scope	Agronomy and Crop Science Animal Science and Zoology Food Science Soil Science Control and Systems Engineering