How to format your references using the BMC Biotechnology citation style

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

1. Patterson DJ. Ecology. Seeing the big picture on microbe distribution. Science. 2009;325:1506–7.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Bishop NA, Guarente L. Two neurons mediate diet-restriction-induced longevity in C. elegans. Nature. 2007;447:545–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Tamisiea ME, Mitrovica JX, Davis JL. GRACE gravity data constrain ancient ice geometries and continental dynamics over Laurentia. Science. 2007;316:881–3.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Farhan A, Gulati J, Groβe-Wilde E, Vogel H, Hansson BS, Knaden M. The CCHamide 1 receptor modulates sensory perception and olfactory behavior in starved Drosophila. Sci Rep. 2013;3:2765.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Teague KA, Gallicchio N. The Evolution of Meteorology. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2017.

An edited book

1. Jann MW, Penzak SR, Cohen LJ, editors. Applied Clinical Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics of Psychopharmacological Agents. 1st ed. 2016. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Ruiz-Amaya J, Delgado-Restituto M, Rodríguez-Vázquez Á. Case Study: Design of a 10bit@60MS Pipeline ADC. In: Delgado-Restituto M, Rodríguez-Vázquez Á, editors. Device-Level Modeling and Synthesis of High-Performance Pipeline ADCs. New York, NY: Springer; 2011. p. 105–70.

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 BMC Biotechnology.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Is Depression a Mental or Physical Illness? Unravelling the Inflammation Hypothesis. IFLScience. 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/depression-mental-or-physical-illness-unravelling-inflammation-hypothesis/. 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

1. Government Accountability Office. [Comments on Applicability of Vacancies Act to Various Labor and Education Officers]. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1986.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Ploehs JR. The literacy benefits of middle school tutors who tutor emergent readers. Doctoral dissertation. University of Cincinnati; 2009.

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

1. Wagner J. Back on the Mound, Harvey Has Issues With Command. New York Times. 2017;:D1.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

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	BMC Biotechnology
Abbreviation	BMC Biotechnol.
ISSN (online)	1472-6750
Scope	Biotechnology

Research and Writing Guides