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

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

Stevens CF: An evolutionary scaling law for the primate visual system and its basis in cortical function. Nature 2001, 411:193–195.

A journal article with 2 authors

Yang X, Lu X: Drastic change in China’s lakes and reservoirs over the past decades. Sci Rep 2014, 4:6041.

A journal article with 3 authors

Liu C, Linde AT, Sacks IS: Slow earthquakes triggered by typhoons. Nature 2009, 459:833–836.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Allison TJ, Winter CC, Fournié JJ, Bonneville M, Garboczi DN: Structure of a human gammadelta T-cell antigen receptor. Nature 2001, 411:820–824.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Meinert CL: Clinical Trials Dictionary. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2012.

An edited book

Shahid SA, Ahmed M (Eds): Environmental Cost and Face of Agriculture in the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries: Fostering Agriculture in the Context of Climate Change. Springer International Publishing; 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

Kallenbach E, Schinköthe W, Furchert H-J: Drives with Limited Motion. In Handbook of Fractional-Horsepower Drives. Edited by Kallenbach E, Stölting H-D, Amrhein W. Springer; 2008:205–316.

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 Chemical Biology.

Blog post

Hale T: Can Humans Sense A “Force Field” Around Their Body? 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: Special Education: Financing Health and Educational Services for Handicapped Children. 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

Tofthagen CS: Development and psychometric evaluation of the Chemotherapy Induced Peripheral Neuropathy Assessment Tool. 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

Walsh MW: Struggling Puerto Rico Defaults on Its Debt Payments. 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 Chemical Biology
Abbreviation	Curr. Opin. Chem. Biol.
ISSN (print)	1367-5931
ISSN (online)	1879-0402
Scope	Biochemistry Analytical Chemistry