How to format your references using the Genome Biology citation style

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

1. O’Callaghan T. Introduction: The prevention agenda. Nature. 2011;471:S2-4.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Wigler M, Mishra B. Genetics. Wild by nature. Science. 2002;296:1407–8.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Attardo A, Fitzgerald JE, Schnitzer MJ. Impermanence of dendritic spines in live adult CA1 hippocampus. Nature. 2015;523:592–6.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Chahrour M, Jung SY, Shaw C, Zhou X, Wong STC, Qin J, et al. MeCP2, a key contributor to neurological disease, activates and represses transcription. Science. 2008;320:1224–9.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Brook MV. Ultrasonic Inspection Technology Development and Search Unit Design. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2011.

An edited book

1. Catalano D. Contemporary Cryptology. Cramer R, Crescenzo GD, Darmgård I, Pointcheval D, Takagi T, editors. Basel: Birkhäuser; 2005.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Doumit S, Minai A. Exploration for Agents with Different Personalities in Unknown Environments. In: Minai AA, Braha D, Bar-Yam Y, editors. Unifying Themes in Complex Systems VII: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Complex Systems. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2012. p. 44–53.

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 Genome Biology.

Blog post

1. O`Callaghan J. Watch Water Droplets Explode As They Freeze From The Outside In [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2017 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/physics/watch-water-droplets-explode-as-they-freeze-from-the-outside-in/

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

1. Government Accountability Office. IRS Information Systems: Weaknesses Increase Risk of Fraud and Impair Reliability of Management Information. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1993 Sep. Report No.: AIMD-93-34.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Tzillah A. The emissions of selected air pollutants from biodiesel fuel usage [Doctoral dissertation]. [Cincinnati, OH]: University of Cincinnati; 2009.

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

1. Kelly DA. Staying in Touch, for Less. New York Times. 2010 Jul 27;TR3.

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	Genome Biology
ISSN (online)	1474-760X
Scope