How to format your references using the Journal of Biomedical Informatics citation style

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

[1]

D. Noonan, Language: Lost in translation, Nature. 508 (2014) S4-5.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

J.R.S. Newman, A.E. Keating, Comprehensive identification of human bZIP interactions with coiled-coil arrays, Science. 300 (2003) 2097–2101.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

X. Hao, L. Martin-Rouault, M. Cui, A self-adaptive method for creating high efficiency communication channels through random scattering media, Sci. Rep. 4 (2014) 5874.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

Q.-L. Ying, J. Wray, J. Nichols, L. Batlle-Morera, B. Doble, J. Woodgett, P. Cohen, A. Smith, The ground state of embryonic stem cell self-renewal, Nature. 453 (2008) 519–523.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

J. Tian, Software Quality Engineering, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2005.

An edited book

[1]

E.N. Dvorkin, Nonlinear Continua, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2005.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

T. Saeki, M. Kawano, Does IgG4-Related Disease Have an Autoimmune Basis?, in: T. Saito, J.H. Stone, H. Nakashima, T. Saeki, M. Kawano (Eds.), IgG4-Related Kidney Disease, Springer Japan, Tokyo, 2016: pp. 55–63.

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 Biomedical Informatics.

Blog post

[1]

S. Luntz, Misinformed Spiders Lead Colonies To Disaster, IFLScience. (2015).

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, Public Transit: Funding for New Starts and Small Starts Projects, October 2004 through June 2012, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2012.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

R.A. Alayed, Creating a culture of safety using electronic medical records as a tool, Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 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

[1]

L. Saslow, Motorists, Take Note: The Bike Path Is Complete, New York Times. (2007) LI11.

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 Biomedical Informatics
Abbreviation	J. Biomed. Inform.
ISSN (print)	1532-0464
Scope	Computer Science Applications Health Informatics