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

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

[1]

Lam L. From physics to revolution and back. Science 2015;348:1170.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Gratzer W, Nathan DG. Obituary: Fred S. Rosen (1930-2005). Nature 2005;435:1044.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Li J, Sato T, Kageyama A. Repeated and sudden reversals of the dipole field generated by a spherical dynamo action. Science 2002;295:1887–90.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Burrows MT, Schoeman DS, Buckley LB, Moore P, Poloczanska ES, Brander KM, et al. The pace of shifting climate in marine and terrestrial ecosystems. Science 2011;334:652–5.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Blundell A, Harrison R, Turney B. The Essential Guide to Becoming a Doctor. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell; 2010.

An edited book

[1]

Ebbin SA, Håkon Hoel A, Sydnes AK, editors. A Sea Change: The Exclusive Economic Zone and Governance Institutions for Living Marine Resources. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2005.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Li M. Information Distance and Applications. In: Harju T, Karhumäki J, Lepistö A, editors. Developments in Language Theory: 11th International Conference, DLT 2007, Turku, Finland, July 3-6, 2007. Proceedings, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2007, p. 28–28.

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 Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology.

Blog post

[1]

Luntz S. Vast Galactic Collisions Create Dark Matter Laboratory. IFLScience 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/space/vast-galactic-collisions-create-dark-matter-laboratory/ (accessed October 30, 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

[1]

Government Accountability Office. Expenditure of Federal Funds by Timberlane Regional High School District, New Hampshire. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1970.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Corbets JB. Evaluating System Architecture Quality and Architecting Team Performance Using Information Quality Theory. Doctoral dissertation. George Washington University, 2017.

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]

Kolomatsky M. Where It’s Good to Have Four Legs. New York Times 2017:RE2.

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 Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology
Abbreviation	J. Genet. Eng. Biotechnol.
ISSN (print)	1687-157X
Scope	Biotechnology Genetics