How to format your references using the Biotechnology Letters citation style

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

Yong E (2014) First response: race against time. Nature 510:S5

A journal article with 2 authors

Rieseberg LH, Willis JH (2007) Plant speciation. Science 317:910–914

A journal article with 3 authors

Ben-David O, Cohen G, Fineberg J (2010) The dynamics of the onset of frictional slip. Science 330:211–214

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Wright CF, Teichmann SA, Clarke J, Dobson CM (2005) The importance of sequence diversity in the aggregation and evolution of proteins. Nature 438:878–881

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kusumoto F (2015) Understanding Intracardiac EGMs. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Liberty J (2011) Programming Reactive Extensions and LINQ. Apress, Berkeley, CA

A chapter in an edited book

Nunes I (2014) Improving the Design and Modularity of BDI Agents with Capability Relationships. In: Dalpiaz F, Dix J, Riemsdijk MB van (eds) Engineering Multi-Agent Systems: Second International Workshop, EMAS 2014, Paris, France, May 5-6, 2014, Revised Selected Papers. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 58–80

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 Letters.

Blog post

Luntz S (2015) Antarctic Temperatures Reach Record Highs. In: IFLScience. Accessed 30 Oct 2018

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 (1996) Amtrak’s Strategic Business Plan: Progress to Date. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Mohajer R (2012) A transcendental approach to John Coltrane: applying concepts of spirituality to Giant Steps into the Cosmos. 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

Greenhouse L (2007) Justices Restore Judges’ Control Over Sentencing. New York Times A1

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Yong 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Rieseberg and Willis 2007; Yong 2014).

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

Two authors: (Rieseberg and Willis 2007)
Three or more authors: (Wright et al. 2005)

About the journal

Full journal title	Biotechnology Letters
Abbreviation	Biotechnol. Lett.
ISSN (print)	0141-5492
ISSN (online)	1573-6776
Scope	Biotechnology General Medicine