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. Turner MS. History: Aspen physics turns 50. Nature. 2012;486:315–7.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Anglada-Escudé G, Tuomi M. Exoplanet detection. Comment on “Stellar activity masquerading as planets in the habitable zone of the M dwarf Gliese 581.” Science. 2015;347:1080.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Roughgarden J, Oishi M, Akçay E. Reproductive social behavior: cooperative games to replace sexual selection. Science. 2006;311:965–9.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Klass K-D, Zompro O, Kristensen NP, Adis J. Mantophasmatodea: a new insect order with extant members in the Afrotropics. Science. 2002;296:1456–9.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Maillard P. Competitive Quality Strategies. Hoboken, NJ USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2013.

An edited book

1. Naghavi M, editor. Asymptomatic Atherosclerosis: Pathophysiology, Detection and Treatment. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press; 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Shih Y-K, Su H, Kao S-S. On the Hamiltonian-Connectedness for Graphs Satisfying Ore’s Theorem. In: Chang R-S, Jain LC, Peng S-L, editors. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Applications - Volume 1: Proceedings of the International Computer Symposium ICS 2012 Held at Hualien, Taiwan, December 12–14, 2012. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2013. p. 25–31.

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. Andrew D. How Oil Spills From Wartime Sea Battles Nearly Wiped Out Famous Welsh Guillemots [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2016 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/how-oil-spills-from-wartime-sea-battles-nearly-wiped-out-famous-welsh-guillemots/

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. ICBM Modernization: Availability Problems and Flight Test Delays in Peacekeeper Program. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1989 Mar. Report No.: NSIAD-89-105.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Edwards JW. The Relation Between Expressed Emotion and Adolescent Psychopathology [Doctoral dissertation]. [Columbus, OH]: Ohio State University; 2006.

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. Marx L. Nila Do and Joshua Simon. New York Times. 2012 Apr 1;ST15.

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