How to format your references using the Journal of Negative Results in BioMedicine citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Negative Results in BioMedicine. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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. Lorenz R. Computational mathematics. Full steam ahead-probably. Science. 2003;299:837–8.
A journal article with 2 authors
1. Mannhart J, Schlom DG. Oxide interfaces--an opportunity for electronics. Science. 2010;327:1607–11.
A journal article with 3 authors
1. Brohawn SG, Campbell EB, MacKinnon R. Physical mechanism for gating and mechanosensitivity of the human TRAAK K+ channel. Nature. 2014;516:126–30.
A journal article with 7 or more authors
1. Fishlock TW, Oral A, Egdell RG, Pethica JB. Manipulation of atoms across a surface at room temperature. Nature. 2000;404:743–5.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
1. Ludders JW, McMillan M. Errors in Veterinary Anesthesia. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2016.
An edited book
1. Gaillardon P-E. Disruptive Logic Architectures and Technologies: From Device to System Level. O’Connor I, Clermidy F, editors. New York, NY: Springer; 2012.
A chapter in an edited book
1. Simovici DA, Djeraba C. Partially Ordered Sets. In: Djeraba C, editor. Mathematical Tools for Data Mining: Set Theory, Partial Orders, Combinatorics. London: Springer; 2008. p. 129–72.

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 Negative Results in BioMedicine.

Blog post
1. Andrew E. What Makes Tattoos Permanent? [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2014 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/what-makes-tattoos-permanent11/

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. Financial Difficulties and Funding at D-Q University. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1977 Oct. Report No.: HRD-77-146.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
1. Cook MM. An Examination of the Proportion of Special Education Students in Single-Parent Homes in Comparison to Regular Education Students in Similar Households [Doctoral dissertation]. [ St. Charles, MO]: Lindenwood 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. Shpigel B. Return of Jets’ Decker Is Clouded by Injury. New York Times. 2016 Sep 30;D6.

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 titleJournal of Negative Results in BioMedicine
AbbreviationJ. Negat. Results Biomed.
ISSN (online)1477-5751
ScopeGeneral Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
General Medicine
General Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics

Other styles