How to format your references using the Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering Reviews citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering Reviews. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Piattelli-Palmarini, M. (2002). Grammar: the barest essentials. Nature, 416(6877), 129.

A journal article with 2 authors

Fisher, A. T., & Becker, K. (2000). Channelized fluid flow in oceanic crust reconciles heat-flow and permeability data. Nature, 403(6765), 71–74.

A journal article with 3 authors

Keizer, K., Lindenberg, S., & Steg, L. (2008). The spreading of disorder. Science (New York, N.Y.), 322(5908), 1681–1685.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

McDonald, D., Wu, L., Bohks, S. M., KewalRamani, V. N., Unutmaz, D., & Hope, T. J. (2003). Recruitment of HIV and its receptors to dendritic cell-T cell junctions. Science (New York, N.Y.), 300(5623), 1295–1297.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Idelberger, K. (2011). The World of Footbridges. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Buckland, S. T. (2015). Distance Sampling: Methods and Applications (E. A. Rexstad, T. A. Marques, & C. S. Oedekoven, Eds.; 1st ed. 2015). Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Nagashima, Y., & Kunihiro, N. (2012). Faster Algorithm for Solving Hard Knapsacks for Moderate Message Length. In W. Susilo, Y. Mu, & J. Seberry (Eds.), Information Security and Privacy: 17th Australasian Conference, ACISP 2012, Wollongong, NSW, Australia, July 9-11, 2012. Proceedings (pp. 43–56). 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 Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering Reviews.

Blog post

Carpineti, A. (2016, November 16). Archaeologists Map Underwater Mesolithic Stone Age Settlement. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/archaeologists-map-underwater-mesolithic-stone-age-settlement-/

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 (GAO-11-669R). 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

Luna, S. C. (2010). An integrated treatment program for individuals with co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders: 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

Herskovic, L. (2017, June 23). Who’s That Cat? New York Times, A21.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Piattelli-Palmarini, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Fisher & Becker, 2000; Piattelli-Palmarini, 2002).

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

Two authors: (Fisher & Becker, 2000)
Three authors: (Keizer et al., 2008)
6 or more authors: (McDonald et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal title	Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering Reviews
Abbreviation	Biotechnol. Genet. Eng. Rev.
ISSN (print)	0264-8725
ISSN (online)	2046-5556
Scope	Biotechnology Molecular Biology Bioengineering