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

Bennett, C. L. (2006). Cosmology from start to finish. Nature, 440(7088), 1126–1131.

A journal article with 2 authors

Constantinople, C. M., & Bruno, R. M. (2013). Deep cortical layers are activated directly by thalamus. Science (New York, N.Y.), 340(6140), 1591–1594.

A journal article with 3 authors

Foley, S., Tiepolo, M., & Vannucci, R. (2002). Growth of early continental crust controlled by melting of amphibolite in subduction zones. Nature, 417(6891), 837–840.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Muttoni, G., Erba, E., Kent, D. V., & Bachtadse, V. (2005). Mesozoic Alpine facies deposition as a result of past latitudinal plate motion. Nature, 434(7029), 59–63.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sharpe, N. F., & Carter, R. F. (2005). Genetic Testing. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Teglio, A., Alfarano, S., Camacho-Cuena, E., & Ginés-Vilar, M. (Eds.). (2013). Managing Market Complexity: The Approach of Artificial Economics (Vol. 662). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Gratton, E., & vandeVen, M. J. (2006). Laser Sources for Confocal Microscopy. In J. B. Pawley (Ed.), Handbook Of Biological Confocal Microscopy (pp. 80–125). Springer US.

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

Andrew, E. (2014, September 2). How neuroscience is being used to spread quackery in business and education. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/how-neuroscience-being-used-spread-quackery-business-and-education/

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. (1977). The National School Lunch Program: Is It Working? (PAD-77-6). 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

Wilson, M. W. (2012). Angels in Tinseltown: Health insurance, hormone use, and HIV among transgender women in Los Angeles [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

Wagner, J. (2016, September 20). Syndergaard Stumbles en Route to a Potential Wild-Card Start. New York Times, B11.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bennett, 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Bennett, 2006; Constantinople & Bruno, 2013).

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

Two authors: (Constantinople & Bruno, 2013)
Three or more authors: (Muttoni et al., 2005)

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