How to format your references using the Journal of Structural Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Structural Biology. 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
Feldman, J., 2000. Minimization of Boolean complexity in human concept learning. Nature 407, 630–633.
A journal article with 2 authors
Bandyopadhyay, P.R., Hellum, A.M., 2014. Modeling how shark and dolphin skin patterns control transitional wall-turbulence vorticity patterns using spatiotemporal phase reset mechanisms. Sci. Rep. 4, 6650.
A journal article with 3 authors
Gugliotti, L.A., Feldheim, D.L., Eaton, B.E., 2004. RNA-mediated metal-metal bond formation in the synthesis of hexagonal palladium nanoparticles. Science 304, 850–852.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Bico, J., Roman, B., Moulin, L., Boudaoud, A., 2004. Adhesion: elastocapillary coalescence in wet hair. Nature 432, 690.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Gramß, T., Bornholdt, S., Groß, M., Mitchell, M., Pellizzari, T., 2005. Non-Standard Computation. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, FRG.
An edited book
Lofrano, G. (Ed.), 2012. Emerging Compounds Removal from Wastewater: Natural and Solar Based Treatments, SpringerBriefs in Molecular Science. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.
A chapter in an edited book
Bishnupuri, K.S., Mishra, M.K., 2016. Epigenetics of Colorectal Cancer, in: Mishra, M.K., Bishnupuri, K.S. (Eds.), Epigenetic Advancements in Cancer. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 97–121.

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 Structural Biology.

Blog post
Andrew, E., 2014. Bacteria in Bees Could Fight Antibacterial Resistance [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/bacteria-bees-could-fight-antibacterial-resistance/ (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, 2013. Polar Weather Satellites: NOAA Identified Ways to Mitigate Data Gaps, but Contingency Plans and Schedules Require Further Attention (No. GAO-13-676). 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
Richey, B., 2014. Exploration of a Tandem Diels-Alder Ugi-Smiles Reaction (Doctoral dissertation). Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL.

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
Saulny, S., 2004. Club’s Owner And 2 Others Arrested in Raid. New York Times B1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Feldman, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Bandyopadhyay and Hellum, 2014; Feldman, 2000).

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

  • Two authors: (Bandyopadhyay and Hellum, 2014)
  • Three or more authors: (Bico et al., 2004)

About the journal

Full journal titleJournal of Structural Biology
AbbreviationJ. Struct. Biol.
ISSN (print)1047-8477
ScopeStructural Biology

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