How to format your references using the Briefings in Bioinformatics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Briefings in Bioinformatics. 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. Aspinall W. A route to more tractable expert advice. Nature 2010; 463:294–295

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Wyatt MB, McSween HY Jr. Spectral evidence for weathered basalt as an alternative to andesite in the northern lowlands of Mars. Nature 2002; 417:263–266

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Xie W, Wang H, Wu J. Similar morphological and molecular signatures shared by female and male germline stem cells. Sci. Rep. 2014; 4:5580

A journal article with 4 or more authors

1. Chen W, ten Berge D, Brown J, et al. Dishevelled 2 recruits beta-arrestin 2 to mediate Wnt5A-stimulated endocytosis of Frizzled 4. Science 2003; 301:1391–1394

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Wood J, Brown W, Howe H. IT Auditing and Application Controls for Small and Mid-Sized Enterprises. 2013;

An edited book

1. . Cyber Security: Deterrence and IT Protection for Critical Infrastructures. 2013;

A chapter in an edited book

1. Kriz I, Pultr A. Integration I: Multivariable Riemann Integral and Basic Ideas Toward the Lebesgue Integral. Introduction to Mathematical Analysis 2013; 97–116

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 Briefings in Bioinformatics.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Dads Get Postnatal Depression Too. IFLScience 2016;

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. The Department of Education’s Actions To Collect Defaulted Student Loans. 1985;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Mylonas A. ‘Women are the pillars of the family’: Athenian women’s survival strategies during economic crisis. 2014;

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. Hodara S. Depicting the Heavens With Paint, Pencil, Even Cocaine. New York Times 2016; WE9

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	Briefings in Bioinformatics
Abbreviation	Brief. Bioinform.
ISSN (print)	1467-5463
ISSN (online)	1477-4054
Scope	Molecular Biology Information Systems