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

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

Whyard, S., 2015. Plant science. Insecticidal RNA, the long and short of it. Science 347, 950–951.

A journal article with 2 authors

Prospero, J.M., Lamb, P.J., 2003. African droughts and dust transport to the Caribbean: climate change implications. Science 302, 1024–1027.

A journal article with 3 authors

Alexander, J.M., Diez, J.M., Levine, J.M., 2015. Novel competitors shape species’ responses to climate change. Nature 525, 515–518.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Yamamoto, F., Cid, E., Yamamoto, M., Saitou, N., Bertranpetit, J., Blancher, A., 2014. An integrative evolution theory of histo-blood group ABO and related genes. Sci. Rep. 4, 6601.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Collier, C.G., 2016. Hydrometeorology. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Hooper, N.M., Lendeckel, U. (Eds.), 2007. Intramembrane-Cleaving Proteases (I-CLiPs), Proteases in Biology and Disease. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.

A chapter in an edited book

Spaldin, N.A., 2007. Analogies and Differences between Ferroelectrics and Ferromagnets, in: Rabe, K.M., Ahn, C.H., Triscone, J.-M. (Eds.), Physics of Ferroelectrics: A Modern Perspective, Topics in Applied Physics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 175–218.

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: X.

Blog post

Fang, J., 2015. Male Snakes Invest Lots of Energy in Producing Mating Plugs [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/male-snakes-invest-lots-energy-producing-mating-plugs/ (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, 2012. Slot-Controlled Airports: FAA’s Rules Could Be Improved to Enhance Competition and Use of Available Capacity (No. GAO-12-902). 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

Taylor, W.A., 2010. Every citizen a soldier: The U.S. Army’s campaign for universal military training following World War II (Doctoral dissertation). George Washington University, Washington, DC.

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

Walsh, M.W., 2011. Panel Hears Complaints On Pensions At Delphi. New York Times B3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Whyard, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Prospero and Lamb, 2003; Whyard, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Prospero and Lamb, 2003)
Three or more authors: (Yamamoto et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Biotechnology: X
ISSN (print)	2590-1559
Scope