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

Matheson RR Jr (2002) 20th- to 21st-century technological challenges in soft coatings. Science 297:976–979

A journal article with 2 authors

Goodman S, Kreeger K (2003) Getting organized. Nature 423:98–99

A journal article with 3 authors

Moynier F, Yin Q-Z, Schauble E (2011) Isotopic evidence of Cr partitioning into Earth’s core. Science 331:1417–1420

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Riethman HC, Xiang Z, Paul S, et al (2001) Integration of telomere sequences with the draft human genome sequence. Nature 409:948–951

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Mallée R, Fuchs W, Eligehausen R (2013) Design of Fastenings for Use in Concrete - the CEN/TS 1992-4 Provisions. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany

An edited book

Butler MG, Lee PDK, Whitman BY (eds) (2006) Management of Prader-Willi Syndrome, Third Edition. Springer, New York, NY

A chapter in an edited book

Canuto C, Tabacco A (2015) Local comparison of functions. Numerical sequences and series. In: Tabacco A (ed) Mathematical Analysis I. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 123–168

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

Andrew E (2014) John Oliver Hilariously Interviews Stephen Hawking. 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 (1997) Year 2000 Computing Crisis: Risk of Serious Disruption to Essential Government Functions Calls for Agency Action Now. 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

Pan Y (2010) Long-Term Effects of Higher-Quality Early Childhood Education for At-Risk Children on Their Later Development and Resilience. Doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina

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

CHRISTOPHER KELLY; Christopher Kelly is a fellow in ancient history at Pembroke College, Cambridge (1990) Paganism Was Alive and Well. New York Times 743

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Matheson 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Matheson 2002; Goodman and Kreeger 2003).

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

Two authors: (Goodman and Kreeger 2003)
Three or more authors: (Riethman et al. 2001)

About the journal

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