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

Bignami, G.F. 2000. A 1,000-year chain of thinkers. Nature 404:227.

A journal article with 2 authors

Saks, M.J., and J.J. Koehler. 2005. The coming paradigm shift in forensic identification science. Science 309:892–895.

A journal article with 3 authors

Lampard, G.R., C.A. Macalister, and D.C. Bergmann. 2008. Arabidopsis stomatal initiation is controlled by MAPK-mediated regulation of the bHLH SPEECHLESS. Science 322:1113–1116.

A journal article with 10 or more authors

Welter, S., K. Brunner, J.W. Hofstraat, and L. De Cola. 2003. Electroluminescent device with reversible switching between red and green emission. Nature 421:54–57.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Singer, B., and G. Fedorinchik. 2009. Investment Leadership and Portfolio Management (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.).

An edited book

Nasruddin, F.A. 2016. Finite Element Analysis on Badminton Racket Design Parameters (Cham: Springer International Publishing).

A chapter in an edited book

Matalonga, S., F. Rodrigues, and G.H. Travassos. 2015. Matching Context Aware Software Testing Design Techniques to ISO/IEC/IEEE 29119. In Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination: 15th International Conference, SPICE 2015, Gothenburg, Sweden, June 16-17, 2015. Proceedings, T. Rout, R.V. O’Connor, and A. Dorling, eds. (Cham: Springer International Publishing), pp. 33–44.

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

Andrew, D. 2016. Ig Nobel Prize Winner: Why I Lived Like A Badger, An Otter, A Deer And A Swift (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. 1997. Air Traffic Control: Status of FAA’s Standard Terminal Automation Replacement System Project (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

Kim, E.H. 2010. A personal narrative of a Korean immigrant to the United States: A quest for finding a niche. 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

Feeney, K. 2012. Coming for ‘Cake Boss’ And Finding More. New York Times NJ9.

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