How to format your references using the Canadian Biosystems Engineering citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Canadian Biosystems Engineering (CBE). 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Stivers, J.T. 2004. Comment on “Uracil DNA glycosylase activity is dispensable for immunoglobulin class switch.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 306(5704): 2042; author reply 2042.

A journal article with 2 authors

Felton, L.M. and C. Anthony. 2005. Biochemistry: role of PQQ as a mammalian enzyme cofactor? Nature 433(7025): E10; discussion E11-2.

A journal article with 3 authors

Crespo-Hernández, C.E., B. Cohen and B. Kohler. 2005. Base stacking controls excited-state dynamics in A.T DNA. Nature 436(7054): 1141–1144.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Zanin, M., J.M. Alcazar, J.V. Carbajosa, M.G. Paez, D. Papo, P. Sousa, E. Menasalvas and S. Boccaletti. 2014. Parenclitic networks: uncovering new functions in biological data. Scientific Reports 4: 5112.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Schattke, W. and R. Díez Muiño. 2013. Quantum Monte Carlo Programming. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Bonavina, L. (Ed). 2012. Innovation in Esophageal Surgery. Milano: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Rahmandoust, M. and M.R. Ayatollahi. 2016. CNT/FRP Composites. In Characterization of Carbon Nanotube Based Composites under Consideration of Defects, ed. M.R. Ayatollahi, 177–217. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

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 Canadian Biosystems Engineering.

Blog post

Andrew, E. 2014. Couple Found Holding Hands For 700 Years. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/couple-found-holding-hands-700-years/ (2018 /10/30)

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. 2016. Homeland Security: Weak Oversight of Human Resources Information Technology Investment Needs Considerable Improvement. GAO-16-407T. Washington, DC: 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

Rendleman, A.J. 2017. Energetics of Physiological Plasticity during Larval Development of the Sand Dollar, Dendraster Excentricus. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Crow, K. 2002. A Drive to Save a Tiger By the Name of Tammany. New York Times. 14 July 2002.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Stivers 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Felton and Anthony 2005; Stivers 2004).

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

Two authors: (Felton and Anthony 2005)
Three or more authors: (Zanin et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Canadian Biosystems Engineering
ISSN (print)	1492-9058
ISSN (online)	1492-9066
Scope