How to format your references using the Current Opinion in Biotechnology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Current Opinion in 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

Ackert RP Jr: Glaciology. An ice sheet remembers. Science 2003, 299:57–58.

A journal article with 2 authors

King C-Y, Diaz-Avalos R: Protein-only transmission of three yeast prion strains. Nature 2004, 428:319–323.

A journal article with 3 authors

Wang KH, Penmatsa A, Gouaux E: Neurotransmitter and psychostimulant recognition by the dopamine transporter. Nature 2015, 521:322–327.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Kondhare KR, Hedden P, Kettlewell PS, Farrell AD, Monaghan JM: Quantifying the impact of exogenous abscisic acid and gibberellins on pre-maturity α-amylase formation in developing wheat grains. Sci Rep 2014, 4:5355.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Baudin P: Wireless Transceiver Architecture. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2014.

An edited book

Zereini F, Wiseman CLS (Eds): Platinum Metals in the Environment. Springer; 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

Stoffel-Wagner B: Metabolism and Enzymology of Cholesterol and Steroids. In Handbook of Neurochemistry and Molecular Neurobiology: Neural Lipids. Edited by Lajtha A, Tettamanti G, Goracci G. Springer US; 2010:59–74.

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 Current Opinion in Biotechnology.

Blog post

O`Callaghan J: These Two New Exoplanets Might Be The Youngest Worlds We’ve Ever Found. 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

Government Accountability Office: Internet Protocol Version 6: Federal Government in Early Stages of Transition and Key Challenges Remain. U.S. Government Printing Office; 2006.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Odom SA: Electronic health records: Overcoming obstacles to improve acceptance and utilization for mental health clinicians. 2017,

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

Williams J: Books of Wonder Coming to West Side. New York Times 2017,

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	Current Opinion in Biotechnology
Abbreviation	Curr. Opin. Biotechnol.
ISSN (print)	0958-1669
ISSN (online)	1879-0429
Scope	Biotechnology Bioengineering Biomedical Engineering