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

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

P. Angerer, “Graduate journal: at the crossroads,” Nature 427(6971), 270 (2004).

A journal article with 2 authors

T. Sacco and B. Sacchetti, “Role of secondary sensory cortices in emotional memory storage and retrieval in rats,” Science 329(5992), 649–656 (2010).

A journal article with 3 authors

A. J. Nederbragt, A. E. van Loon, and W. J. A. G. Dictus, “Evolutionary biology: hedgehog crosses the snail’s midline,” Nature 417(6891), 811–812 (2002).

A journal article with 4 or more authors

E. Knill et al., “An algorithmic benchmark for quantum information processing,” Nature 404(6776), 368–370 (2000).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

P. P. Raj and S. Erdine, Pain-Relieving Procedures, Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK (2012).

An edited book

P. L. P. Rau, Ed., Cross-Cultural Design. Methods, Practice, and Case Studies: 5th International Conference, CCD 2013, Held as Part of HCI International 2013, Las Vegas, NV, USA, July 21-26, 2013, Proceedings, Part I, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg (2013).

A chapter in an edited book

J. Sanchez-Sotelo, “Open Reduction and Internal Fixation for Distal Humerus Fractures and Nonunions,” in Essential Techniques in Elbow Surgery, S. Antuña and R. Barco, Eds., pp. 41–58, Springer International Publishing, Cham (2016).

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 Optics.

Blog post

S. Luntz, “PG-13 Films More Violent Than R-Rated Movies,” IFLScience, 13 January 2017, <https://www.iflscience.com/brain/pg13-films-more-violent-than-rrated-movies/> (accessed 30 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, “Degradable Plastics: Standards, Research and Development,” RCED-88-208, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC (1988).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

B. Villegas, “The optimization and characterization of superconducting magnesium diboride thin films,” Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach (2009).

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

K. Lambert, “Santa on the Brain,” in New York Times, p. SR8 (2013).

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

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 Optics
Abbreviation	J. Biomed. Opt.
ISSN (print)	1083-3668
ISSN (online)	1560-2281
Scope	Biomedical Engineering Biomaterials Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics