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

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

Faber, K.T.: ‘Materials science. Small volumes create super(elastic) effects’Science, 2013, 341, (6153), pp. 1464–1465.

A journal article with 2 authors

Thomas, G.L., Thorne, R.E.: ‘Night-time predation by Steller sea lions’Nature, 2001, 411, (6841), p. 1013.

A journal article with 3 authors

Nicastro, F., Mathur, S., Elvis, M.: ‘Missing baryons and the warm-hot intergalactic medium’Science, 2008, 319, (5859), pp. 55–57.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Wang, G.C., Wang, Q., Li, S.L., Ai, X.G., Fan, C.G.: ‘Evidence of multi-step nucleation leading to various crystallization pathways from an Fe-O-Al melt’Sci. Rep., 2014, 4, p. 5082.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Young, G.C.: ‘Municipal Solid Waste to Energy Conversion Processes’ (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2010)

An edited book

Murgante, B., Gervasi, O., Misra, S., et al. (Eds.): ‘Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2012: 12th International Conference, Salvador de Bahia, Brazil, June 18-21, 2012, Proceedings, Part I’ (Springer, 2012)

A chapter in an edited book

Stechert, C., Franke, H.-J., Vietor, T.: ‘Knowledge-Based Design Principles and Tools for Parallel Robots’, in Schütz, D., Wahl, F.M. (Eds.): ‘Robotic Systems for Handling and Assembly’ (Springer, 2011), pp. 59–75

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 Systems Biology.

Blog post

Carpineti, C.: ‘These Images Of A Pug’s Skull Will Completely Ruin Your Day’, https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/these-images-of-a-pugs-skull-will-completely-ruin-your-day/, 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: ‘Telling America’s Story to the World--Problems and Issues’ (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Greenfield, D.: ‘Beyond Super Heroes and Talking Animals: Social Justice in Graphic Novels in Education’. Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University, 2017

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

McFADDEN, R.D.: ‘Gabe Pressman, 93, Dean Of New York News, Dies’New York Times, 2017, p. D6.

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 Systems Biology
Abbreviation	IET Syst. Biol.
ISSN (print)	1751-8849
Scope	Biotechnology Cell Biology Genetics Molecular Biology Modelling and Simulation

Research and Writing Guides