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

Wojchowski D: Eugene Goldwasser (1922-2010). Nature 2011, 470:40.

A journal article with 2 authors

Edwards M, Richardson AJ: Impact of climate change on marine pelagic phenology and trophic mismatch. Nature 2004, 430:881–884.

A journal article with 3 authors

Li Z, Marsiglio F, Carbotte JP: Vanishing of interband light absorption in a persistent spin helix state. Sci Rep 2013, 3:2828.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Song SJ, Seok JY, Yoon JH, Kim KM, Kim GH, Lee MH, Hwang CS: Real-time identification of the evolution of conducting nano-filaments in TiO2 thin film ReRAM. Sci Rep 2013, 3:3443.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Stavetski EJ: Managing Hedge Fund Managers. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2009.

An edited book

Allen C: The Essential Guide to Open Source Flash Development. Apress; 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

Zeitler JA: Pharmaceutical Terahertz Spectroscopy and Imaging. In Analytical Techniques in the Pharmaceutical Sciences. Edited by Müllertz A, Perrie Y, Rades T. Springer; 2016:171–222.

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

Andrew E: Nepal Earthquake: Such Huge Aftershocks Are Rare. IFLScience 2015,

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: High Performance Computing and Communications: New Program Direction Would Benefit from a More Focused Effort. U.S. Government Printing Office; 1994.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Yoon T: Object Recognition Based on Multi-Agent Spatial Reasoning. 2008,

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

Brantley B: Time Takes the Sharp Edges Off a Femme Fatale in a David Hare Revival. New York Times 2016,

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

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