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 Seehausen O (2015) Evolution: Beauty varies with the light. Nature 521, 34–35.

A journal article with 2 authors

1 Klausner R & Alonso P (2004) An attack on all fronts. Nature 430, 930–931.

A journal article with 3 authors

1 Fan C, Li J & Wang L (2014) Phase transitions, mechanical properties and electronic structures of novel boron phases under high-pressure: a first-principles study. Sci Rep 4, 6786.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

1 Tobias JA, Bates JM, Hackett SJ & Seddon N (2008) Comment on “The latitudinal gradient in recent speciation and extinction rates of birds and mammals.” Science 319, 901; author reply 901.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1 Vignes A (2013) Extractive Metallurgy 3 John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ USA.

An edited book

1 Jirillo E (ed.) (2008) Hepatitis C Virus Disease: Immunobiology and Clinical Applications Springer, New York, NY.

A chapter in an edited book

1 Barletti L, Demeio L & Frosali G (2007) Multiband quantum transport models for semiconductor devices. In Transport Phenomena and Kinetic Theory: Applications to Gases, Semiconductors, Photons, and Biological Systems (Cercignani C & Gabetta E, eds), pp. 55–89. Birkhäuser, Boston, MA.

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 Andrew E (2015) How To Guard Your Career Against Rapid Technological Change. 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 (2001) Schools and Libraries Program: Update on E-Rate Funding 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 Hall D (2015) Resistance, reluctance, and revelation: Examining faculty perceptions of online learning options at a Faith-Based university. .

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 Hernández JC & Drucker J (2017) Wooing China Investors With the Trump Name And Offers of U.S. Visas. New York Times, A18.

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