How to format your references using the Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering. 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

Ramamurthi KS (2011) Molecular biology. mRNA delivers the goods. Science 331: 1021–1022.

A journal article with 2 authors

Costa S, Shaw P (2006) Chromatin organization and cell fate switch respond to positional information in Arabidopsis. Nature 439: 493–496.

A journal article with 3 authors

Zhang Z, Shibahara K, Stillman B (2000) PCNA connects DNA replication to epigenetic inheritance in yeast. Nature 408: 221–225.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Knapp AK, Fay PA, Blair JM, et al. (2002) Rainfall variability, carbon cycling, and plant species diversity in a mesic grassland. Science 298: 2202–2205.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sedlacek HH, Sapienza AM, Eid V (2008) Ways to Successful Strategies in Drug Research and Development, Weinheim, Germany, Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH.

An edited book

Birtchnell J, Newberry M, Kalaitzaki A (Eds.) (2016) Relating Theory – Clinical and Forensic Applications, London, Palgrave Macmillan UK.

A chapter in an edited book

Cendón JA, Marcos AG, Limas MC, et al. (2010) A Multi-agent Data Mining System for Defect Forecasting in a Decentralized Manufacturing Environment, In: Herrero Á, Corchado E, Redondo C, et al. (Eds.), Computational Intelligence in Security for Information Systems 2010: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Computational Intelligence in Security for Information Systems (CISIS’10), Berlin, Heidelberg, Springer, 43–50.

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 Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering.

Blog post

Andrew E (2014) IFLScience, Two New Dwarf Planets Discovered in Outer Solar System, 2014. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/space/two-new-dwarf-planets-discovered-outer-solar-system/.

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 (2006) Rail Transit: Observations on FTA’s State Safety Oversight Program, Washington, DC, U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Horwitz MH (2017) Morphodynamics and Sediment Transport Pathways of the John’s Pass-Blind Pass Dual Inlet System: Pinellas County, Florida.

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

Gustines GG (2016) Off ‘The Real World,’ a Relationship Endures. New York Times ST19.

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	Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering
ISSN (online)	1551-0018
Scope