How to format your references using the Journal of Biological Physics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Biological Physics. 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

Murray, N.W.: Astronomy. Evidence of things not seen. Science. 336, 1121–1122 (2012)

A journal article with 2 authors

Feehley, T., Nagler, C.R.: Health: The weighty costs of non-caloric sweeteners. Nature. 514, 176–177 (2014)

A journal article with 3 authors

Salter, M.G., Franklin, K.A., Whitelam, G.C.: Gating of the rapid shade-avoidance response by the circadian clock in plants. Nature. 426, 680–683 (2003)

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Zhao, W.-W., Liu, Z., Shan, S., Zhang, W.-W., Wang, J., Ma, Z.-Y., Xu, J.-J., Chen, H.-Y.: Bismuthoxyiodide nanoflakes/titania nanotubes arrayed p-n heterojunction and its application for photoelectrochemical bioanalysis. Sci. Rep. 4, 4426 (2014)

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Coussy, O.: Poromechanics. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK (2005)

An edited book

Yu, G., Jin, Y. eds: Assessing Chinese Learners of English: Language Constructs, Consequences and Conundrums. Palgrave Macmillan UK, London (2016)

A chapter in an edited book

Rosenberg, E., Zilber-Rosenberg, I.: Microbiotas are Part of Holobiont Fitness. In: Zilber-Rosenberg, I. (ed.) The Hologenome Concept: Human, Animal and Plant Microbiota. pp. 55–80. Springer International Publishing, Cham (2013)

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 Journal of Biological Physics.

Blog post

Andrew, E.: A Team Member’s View Of All The Work On Earth It Took To Get New Horizons To Pluto, https://www.iflscience.com/space/team-member-s-view-all-work-earth-it-took-get-new-horizons-pluto/

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: 2010 Census: Key Enumeration Activities Are Moving Forward, but Information Technology Systems Remain a Concern. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC (2010)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Williams, A.: Kindergarten through third grade reading tutors in Northeast Mississippi, (2010)

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

Van Gelder, S.K.C. by L.: Arts, Briefly; A New Yorker Clone Folds, (2005)

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	Journal of Biological Physics
Abbreviation	J. Biol. Phys.
ISSN (print)	0092-0606
ISSN (online)	1573-0689
Scope	Biophysics Cell Biology Molecular Biology Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

Research and Writing Guides