How to format your references using the Systems Biomedicine citation style

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

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
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

Hellemans A. Getting into good company. Nature 2002; 416:5.

A journal article with 2 authors

Sun Z-W, Allis CD. Ubiquitination of histone H2B regulates H3 methylation and gene silencing in yeast. Nature 2002; 418:104–8.

A journal article with 3 authors

Mellman I, Coukos G, Dranoff G. Cancer immunotherapy comes of age. Nature 2011; 480:480–9.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Ferbitz L, Maier T, Patzelt H, Bukau B, Deuerling E, Ban N. Trigger factor in complex with the ribosome forms a molecular cradle for nascent proteins. Nature 2004; 431:590–6.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ash MK. The Mary Kay Way. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2008.

An edited book

Just T, Maennig W, editors. Understanding German Real Estate Markets. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

Mickel AE, Dallimore EJ. Work Stress: Help Me Get My Feet Back on the Ground. In: Reilly NP, Sirgy MJ, Gorman CA, editors. Work and Quality of Life: Ethical Practices in Organizations. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2012. page 65–78.

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 Systems Biomedicine.

Blog post

Andrew E. Radioactive Boar Roam The Forests Of Germany. IFLScience2014;

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. FAA Appropriation Issues. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1988.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Stevenson M. A change for the future: Presidents and deans real and ideal leadership practices at community and junior colleges in Mississippi. 2008;

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

Murphy MJO. Friday File. New York Times2014; :C33.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

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	Systems Biomedicine
Abbreviation	Syst. Biomed. (Austin)
ISSN (print)	2162-8130
ISSN (online)	2162-8149
Scope

Research and Writing Guides