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

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

Kinder DR: Politics and the life cycle. Science 2006, 312:1905–1908.

A journal article with 2 authors

Velicogna I, Wahr J: Acceleration of Greenland ice mass loss in spring 2004. Nature 2006, 443:329–331.

A journal article with 3 authors

Gaillard F, Scaillet B, Arndt NT: Atmospheric oxygenation caused by a change in volcanic degassing pressure. Nature 2011, 478:229–232.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Lissy NA, Davis PK, Irwin M, Kaelin WG, Dowdy SF: A common E2F-1 and p73 pathway mediates cell death induced by TCR activation. Nature 2000, 407:642–645.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ohshima H: Biophysical Chemistry of Biointerfaces. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2010.

An edited book

Zobel CW, Altay N, Haselkorn MP (Eds): Advances in Managing Humanitarian Operations. Springer International Publishing; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Horne R, Umarov T: Ensuring Faultless Communication Behaviour in A Commercial Cloud. In Software Engineering and Formal Methods: SEFM 2013 Collocated Workshops: BEAT2, WS-FMDS, FM-RAIL-Bok, MoKMaSD, and OpenCert, Madrid, Spain, September 23-24, 2013, Revised Selected Papers. Edited by Counsell S, Núñez M. Springer International Publishing; 2014:44–55.

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 Structural Biology.

Blog post

Andrew E: Pharma Use Loophole To Hike Up The Price Of Drugs – So Why Doesn’t The NHS Stop It? 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: Schools and Libraries Program: Application and Invoice Review Procedures Need Strengthening. U.S. Government Printing Office; 2000.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Peterson DG: An application of geotechnical techniques to quantitative regional slope stability analysis San Clemente, California. 2012,

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

Stuart C, GEORGE BRETHERTON; TONI MONKOVIC; ANDREW DAS; LUIS DELOUREIRO: Breakout Players Of the First Quarter Of the Season. New York Times 2010,

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 Structural Biology
Abbreviation	Curr. Opin. Struct. Biol.
ISSN (print)	0959-440X
ISSN (online)	1879-033X
Scope	Molecular Biology Structural Biology