How to format your references using the The FEBS Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The FEBS Journal. 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

1 DeBaun MR (2014) Perspective: thinking beyond survival. Nature 515, S16.

A journal article with 2 authors

1 Doumy G & DiMauro LF (2008) Chemistry. Interrogating molecules. Science 322, 1194–1195.

A journal article with 3 authors

1 Charlebois RL, Beiko RG & Ragan MA (2003) Microbial phylogenomics: Branching out. Nature 421, 217.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

1 Hamed M, Khilji S, Chen J & Li Q (2013) Stepwise acetyltransferase association and histone acetylation at the Myod1 locus during myogenic differentiation. Sci Rep 3, 2390.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1 Mahlberg R, Gilles A & Läsch A (2004) Hämatologie Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany.

An edited book

1 Kutnick P (2014) Effective Group Work in Primary School Classrooms: The SPRinG Approach (P. Blatchford, ed.) Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.

A chapter in an edited book

1 Michel-Schertges D (2015) Free Choice of Education? Capabilities, Possibility Spaces, and Incapacitations of Education, Labor, and the Way of Living One Values. In Facing Trajectories from School to Work: Towards a Capability-Friendly Youth Policy in Europe (Otto H-U, Atzmüller R, Berthet T, Bifulco L, Bonvin J-M, Chiappero-Martinetti E, Egdell V, Halleröd B, Kjeldsen CC, Kwiek M, Schröer R, Vero J, & Zieleńska M, eds), pp. 73–86. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

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 The FEBS Journal.

Blog post

1 Evans K (2016) 12 “Healthy Habits” You’re Better Off Giving Up. IFLScience.

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 (2004) Mass Transit: FTA Needs to Better Define and Assess Impact of Certain Policies on New Starts Program 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

1 Chan JA (2014) An in-home visitation program for Meals-on-Wheels recipients: A grant proposal. .

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 Kelly M (1992) THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: The Democrats; CLINTON SAYS BUSH IMPERILS ELDERLY. New York Times, A1.

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	The FEBS Journal
Abbreviation	FEBS J.
ISSN (print)	1742-464X
ISSN (online)	1742-4658
Scope	Biochemistry Cell Biology Molecular Biology

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