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

Bettencourt, L.M.A. 2013. The origins of scaling in cities. Science 340:1438–1441.

A journal article with 2 authors

Bever, J.D., and M. Wang. 2005. Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi: hyphal fusion and multigenomic structure. Nature 433:E3-4; discussion E4.

A journal article with 3 authors

Chevrier, V., F. Poulet, and J.-P. Bibring. 2007. Early geochemical environment of Mars as determined from thermodynamics of phyllosilicates. Nature 448:60–63.

A journal article with 10 or more authors

Gogotsi, Y., S. Welz, D.A. Ersoy, and M.J. McNallan. 2001. Conversion of silicon carbide to crystalline diamond-structured carbon at ambient pressure. Nature 411:283–287.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Matlock, M.D., and R.A. Morgan. 2011. Ecological Engineering Design (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.).

An edited book

Liu, Y. 2011. Location, Localization, and Localizability: Location-awareness Technology for Wireless Networks (New York, NY: Springer).

A chapter in an edited book

Jia, K., and B. Levine. 2010. Autophagy and Longevity: Lessons from C. elegans. In Protein Metabolism and Homeostasis in Aging, N. Tavernarakis, ed. (Boston, MA: Springer US), pp. 47–60.

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, E. 2014. Four Rare White Lion Cubs Born (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. 1974. Why Performance of Automatic Voice Network (AUTOVON) Service Needs Improvement (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

Darwich, M.K. 2017. Cost-Efficient Video On Demand (VOD) Streaming Using Cloud Services. Doctoral dissertation. University of Louisiana.

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

Poniewozik, J. 2017. Big Ideas and Short-Term Stays. New York Times C6.

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

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