How to format your references using the Journal of Biotechnology citation style

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

Goldstein, L., 2012. US election: Know your representatives. Nature 489, 494–495.

A journal article with 2 authors

Robertson, M.P., Scott, W.G., 2007. The structural basis of ribozyme-catalyzed RNA assembly. Science 315, 1549–1553.

A journal article with 3 authors

Levine, J.H., Lin, Y., Elowitz, M.B., 2013. Functional roles of pulsing in genetic circuits. Science 342, 1193–1200.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Yang, K., Rong, W., Qi, L., Li, J., Wei, X., Zhang, Z., 2013. Isolation and characterization of a novel wheat cysteine-rich receptor-like kinase gene induced by Rhizoctonia cerealis. Sci. Rep. 3, 3021.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sinclair, E., 2013. Volatility Trading. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Blanke, M., 2016. Diagnosis and Fault-Tolerant Control, 3rd ed. 2016. ed. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Kanba, S., Kudo, K., Kaneko, N., Wati, H., Iguchi, H., Takemoto, K., 2006. Neuroscience of Emotional Memory and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, in: Kato, N., Kawata, M., Pitman, R.K. (Eds.), PTSD: Brain Mechanisms and Clinical Implications. Springer Japan, Tokyo, pp. 47–53.

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 Biotechnology.

Blog post

Andrew, E., 2015. Think Your Cat Misses You? It’s Probably Just Pissed Off [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/think-your-cat-misses-you-its-probably-just-pissed/ (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, 1988. GAO’s Views on the Default Task Force’s Recommendations for Reducing Default Costs in the Guaranteed Student Loan Program (No. T-HRD-88-7). 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

Johnson, K.C., 2013. Teacher and parent perceptions of classroom experiences of African American male students in a high school alternative program (Doctoral dissertation). Pepperdine University, Malibu, 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

Shpigel, B., 2016. Steelers Are Getting Their 2 Points’ Worth. New York Times B10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Goldstein, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Goldstein, 2012; Robertson and Scott, 2007).

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

Two authors: (Robertson and Scott, 2007)
Three or more authors: (Yang et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Biotechnology
Abbreviation	J. Biotechnol.
ISSN (print)	0168-1656
Scope	Biotechnology Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology General Medicine