How to format your references using the IET Synthetic Biology citation style

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

Pickett, G.: ‘Superfluidity. A new twist to an old story’Nature, 2000, 404, (6777), pp. 450–451.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kasahara, T., Kato, T.: ‘Nutritional biochemistry: A new redox-cofactor vitamin for mammals’Nature, 2003, 422, (6934), p. 832.

A journal article with 3 authors

Smith, T.M., Karl, T.R., Reynolds, R.W.: ‘Climate modeling. How accurate are climate simulations?’Science, 2002, 296, (5567), pp. 483–484.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Muroyama, Y., Fujiwara, Y., Orkin, S.H., Rowitch, D.H.: ‘Specification of astrocytes by bHLH protein SCL in a restricted region of the neural tube’Nature, 2005, 438, (7066), pp. 360–363.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Reiman, J.: ‘As Free and as Just as Possible’ (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012)

An edited book

Alós-Ferrer, C.: ‘The Theory of Extensive Form Games’ (Springer, 2016)

A chapter in an edited book

Yeldan, A.E.: ‘Great Recession and Beyond: Revisiting the Pillars of Economic Thought’, in Stiglitz, J.E., Guzman, M. (Eds.): ‘Contemporary Issues in Macroeconomics: Lessons from The Crisis and Beyond’ (Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2016), pp. 34–41

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 IET Synthetic Biology.

Blog post

Fang, J.: ‘Tooth Enamel Could Have Originated On Prehistoric Fish Scales’, https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/tooth-enamel-originated-prehistoric-fish-scales/, accessed October 2018

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: ‘Proprietary Schools: Analysis of Comments Received From an Association of Schools’ (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1997)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Sutton, D.L.: ‘Alumni perceptions of the role of field education in professional preparation’. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 2015

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

Stewart, J.B.: ‘In Ruling on Insider Trading, A Court Restores Rationality’New York Times, 2017, p. B1.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [2].
This sentence cites two references [2, 4].
This sentence cites four references [2, 4, 6, 8].

About the journal

Full journal title	IET Synthetic Biology
ISSN (print)	1752-1394
Scope	Biotechnology Cell Biology Molecular Biology Bioengineering