How to format your references using the BioTechniques citation style

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

Lynch-Stieglitz, J. 2004. Ocean science. Hemispheric asynchrony of abrupt climate change. Science 304:1919–1920.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ahn, S., and A.L. Joyner. 2005. In vivo analysis of quiescent adult neural stem cells responding to Sonic hedgehog. Nature 437:894–897.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ebel, C., L. Mariconti, and W. Gruissem. 2004. Plant retinoblastoma homologues control nuclear proliferation in the female gametophyte. Nature 429:776–780.

A journal article with 10 or more authors

Moore, D.L., M.G. Blackmore, Y. Hu, K.H. Kaestner, J.L. Bixby, V.P. Lemmon, and J.L. Goldberg. 2009. KLF family members regulate intrinsic axon regeneration ability. Science 326:298–301.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Chase, C.W. 2016. Next Generation Demand Management (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.).

An edited book

Debnath, L. 2015. Wavelet Transforms and Their Applications (Boston, MA: Birkhäuser).

A chapter in an edited book

Sherman, C.H., and J.L. Butler. 2007. Projector Arrays. In Transducers and Arrays for Underwater Sound, J.L. Butler, ed. (New York, NY: Springer), pp. 213–261.

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 BioTechniques.

Blog post

Andrews, R. 2016. Earthquake Detectors Pick Up Epic “Weather Bomb” On Other Side Of The World (IFLScience).

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. 1999. Airline Deregulation: Changes in Airfares, Service Quality, and Barriers to Entry (Washington, DC: 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

Anemaet, W.K. 2008. The effects of non -surgical interventions on osteoarthritis-like changes in the mouse knee. Doctoral dissertation. University of South Florida.

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

Walsh, M.W. 2012. A Town That Backed a Failed Project Refuses to Pay. New York Times B6.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

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	BioTechniques
Abbreviation	Biotechniques
ISSN (print)	0736-6205
ISSN (online)	1940-9818
Scope	General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology Biotechnology