How to format your references using the IRBM citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for IRBM. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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]

Seeberger PH. Exploring life’s sweet spot. Nature 2005;437:1239.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Wallenfang MR, Matunis E. Developmental biology. Orienting stem cells. Science 2003;301:1490–1.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Rogers RR, Krause DW, Curry Rogers K. Cannibalism in the Madagascan dinosaur Majungatholus atopus. Nature 2003;422:515–8.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Zohar YC, Yochelis S, Dahmen KA, Jung G, Paltiel Y. Controlling avalanche criticality in 2D nano arrays. Sci Rep 2013;3:1845.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Saliba AJ, Corona JC, Johnson KE. Option Spread Strategies. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2010.

An edited book

[1]

Kacsuk P, Fahringer T, Németh Z, editors. Distributed and Parallel Systems: From Cluster to Grid Computing. Boston, MA: Springer US; 2007.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Hernandez AM, Peterson AL. Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders and Pain. In: Gatchel RJ, Schultz IZ, editors. Handbook of Occupational Health and Wellness, Boston, MA: Springer US; 2012, p. 63–85.

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 IRBM.

Blog post

[1]

Luntz S. Plants Can Learn By Association, Just Like Pavlov’s Dogs. IFLScience 2016.

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. Space Station: Estimated Total U.S. Funding Requirements. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1995.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Ressler KM. The path to leadership for Native American women at North Dakota tribal colleges. Doctoral dissertation. Capella University, 2008.

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]

George J. My Family’s Flop. New York Times 2011:WK10.

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	IRBM
Abbreviation	IRBM
ISSN (print)	1959-0318
Scope	Biophysics Biomedical Engineering