How to format your references using the Trends in Biotechnology citation style

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

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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.
Risaliti, G. (2014) Astrophysics: Cosmic lens reveals spinning black hole. Nature 507, 173–174
A journal article with 2 authors
1.
Brett, M.J. and Hawkeye, M.M. (2008) Materials science. New materials at a glance. Science 319, 1192–1193
A journal article with 3 authors
1.
Giulini, A. et al. (2004) Control of phyllotaxy by the cytokinin-inducible response regulator homologue ABPHYL1. Nature 430, 1031–1034
A journal article with 3 or more authors
1.
Hakimi, M.-A. et al. (2002) A chromatin remodelling complex that loads cohesin onto human chromosomes. Nature 418, 994–998

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
1.
Dimon, R. (2013) Enterprise Performance Management Done Right, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
1.
Landau, D.P. et al., eds. (2006) Computer Simulation Studies in Condensed-Matter Physics XVI, 103, Springer
A chapter in an edited book
1.
Song, C. and Zhang, M. (2016) Mitigating Soft Error Rate Through Selective Replication in Hybrid Architecture. In Computer Engineering and Technology: 19th CCF Conference, NCCET 2015, Hefei, China, October 18-20, 2015, Revised Selected Papers (Xu, W. et al., eds), pp. 38–47, Springer

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 Trends in Biotechnology.

Blog post
1.
Fang, J. (2015) Skeletons From 400-Year-Old Gravesite Identified As Jamestown Leaders. IFLScience. [Online]. Available: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/skeletons-400-year-old-gravesite-identified-jamestown-leaders/. [Accessed: 30-Oct-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 (1992) Child Labor: Information on Federal Enforcement Efforts, 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
1.
Parker, J.S. (2006) Land Tenure in the Sugar Creek Watershed: A Contextual Analysis of Land Tenure and Social Networks, Intergenerational Farm Succession, and Conservation Use Among Farmers of Wayne County, Ohio. Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State 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.
Milhollin, G. and Motz, K. (2004) Nukes “R” UsNew York Times, A29

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 titleTrends in Biotechnology
AbbreviationTrends Biotechnol.
ISSN (print)0167-7799
ISSN (online)1879-3096
ScopeBiotechnology
Bioengineering

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