How to format your references using the Synthetic and Systems Biotechnology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Synthetic and Systems 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]

Friedman JM. Obesity in the new millennium. Nature 2000;404:632–4.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Downing AL, Leibold MA. Ecosystem consequences of species richness and composition in pond food webs. Nature 2002;416:837–41.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Tran J, Brenner TJ, DiNardo S. Somatic control over the germline stem cell lineage during Drosophila spermatogenesis. Nature 2000;407:754–7.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Dürr M, Biedermann A, Hu Z, Höfer U, Heinz TF. Probing high-barrier pathways of surface reactions by scanning tunneling microscopy. Science 2002;296:1838–41.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Nikrityuk PA. Computational Thermo-Fluid Dynamics. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA; 2011.

An edited book

[1]

Boukas E-K. Mechatronic Systems: Analysis, Design and Implementation. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Eichhorn J. Index Theory for Generalized Dirac Operators on Open Manifolds. In: Bojarski B, Mishchenko AS, Troitsky EV, Weber A, editors. C*-algebras and Elliptic Theory, Basel: Birkhäuser; 2006, p. 73–128.

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 Synthetic and Systems Biotechnology.

Blog post

[1]

Andrew E. Newly Developed Fatty Nanoparticles Could Be A Viable Antibiotic Alternative. IFLScience 2014. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/newly-developed-fatty-nanoparticles-could-be-viable-antibiotic-alternative/ (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. Traffic Congestion: Federal Efforts to Improve Mobility. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1989.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Picchini AM. Neurogenesis in the adult hippocampus: Modulation of stem cell fate by experience. Doctoral dissertation. Columbia University, 2010.

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]

Yablonsky L. Eye Spy. New York Times 2007:6228.

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	Synthetic and Systems Biotechnology
Abbreviation	Synth. Syst. Biotechnol.
ISSN (print)	2405-805X
Scope