How to format your references using the International Journal of Biochemistry and Cell Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for International Journal of Biochemistry and Cell Biology. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

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Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.
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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
Trainor, P., 2003. Development. The bills of qucks and duails. Science 299, 523–524.
A journal article with 2 authors
Sullenger, B.A., Gilboa, E., 2002. Emerging clinical applications of RNA. Nature 418, 252–258.
A journal article with 3 authors
Charlson, R.J., Valero, F.P.J., Seinfeld, J.H., 2005. Atmospheric science. In search of balance. Science 308, 806–807.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Varga, V., Losonczy, A., Zemelman, B.V., Borhegyi, Z., Nyiri, G., Domonkos, A., Hangya, B., Holderith, N., Magee, J.C., Freund, T.F., 2009. Fast synaptic subcortical control of hippocampal circuits. Science 326, 449–453.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Dubuisson, S., 2015. Tracking with Particle Filter for High-Dimensional Observation and State Spaces. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.
An edited book
Zeilinger, S., Martín, J.-F., García-Estrada, C. (Eds.), 2015. Biosynthesis and Molecular Genetics of Fungal Secondary Metabolites, Volume 2, Fungal Biology. Springer, New York, NY.
A chapter in an edited book
Liu, X.-J., Wang, J., 2014. Velocity and Jacobian Analysis of Parallel Mechanisms, in: Wang, J. (Ed.), Parallel Kinematics: Type, Kinematics, and Optimal Design, Springer Tracts in Mechanical Engineering. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 121–128.

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 International Journal of Biochemistry and Cell Biology.

Blog post
O`Callaghan, J., 2016. New Hypothesis Could Explain How The “Impossible” EM Drive Works [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/space/new-em-drive-theory-may-explain-how-it-works/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1994. D.C. Nonappropriated Revenue (No. AIMD-94-71R). U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
Lauterbach, J.R., 2017. Golf in the Collective: Playing in Liminal Space (Doctoral dissertation). Pacifica Graduate Institute, Carpinteria, CA.

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
MacFARQUHAR, N., 2015. Giant Statues Aplenty, But This One Comes With a Fierce Debate. New York Times A4.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Trainor, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Sullenger and Gilboa, 2002; Trainor, 2003).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

  • Two authors: (Sullenger and Gilboa, 2002)
  • Three or more authors: (Varga et al., 2009)

About the journal

Full journal titleInternational Journal of Biochemistry and Cell Biology
AbbreviationInt. J. Biochem. Cell Biol.
ISSN (print)1357-2725
ScopeBiochemistry
Cell Biology

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