How to format your references using the Biochemical Society Transactions citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Biochemical Society Transactions (BST). 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Marty, T. (2012) Research efficiency: Clean up the waste. Nature 484, 27–28

A journal article with 2 authors

Margolis, D. and Bushman, F. (2014) HIV/AIDS. Persistence by proliferation? Science 345, 143–144

A journal article with 3 authors

Madden, M.E.E., Bodnar, R.J. and Rimstidt, J.D. (2004) Jarosite as an indicator of water-limited chemical weathering on Mars. Nature 431, 821–823

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Hirowatari, Y., Yoshida, H., Kurosawa, H., Manita, D. and Tada, N. (2014) Automated measurement method for the determination of vitamin E in plasma lipoprotein classes. Sci. Rep. 4, 4086

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Zhurin, V.V. (2011) Industrial Ion Sources. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA; 2011.

An edited book

Gerecht, S., editor (2011) Biophysical Regulation of Vascular Differentiation and Assembly. 1st ed. New York, NY: Springer; 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

Hatch, J.A. and Groenke, S.L. (2009) Issues in Critical Teacher Education: Insights from the Field. In: Groenke, S.L. and Hatch, J.A., editorsCritical Pedagogy and Teacher Education in the Neoliberal Era: Small Openings. . Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2009. . p. 63–82.

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 Biochemical Society Transactions.

Blog post

Luntz, S. (2017) New Theory That Many Collisions, Not One, Formed The Moon. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/new-theory-that-many-collisions-not-one-formed-the-moon/

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 (1989) Railroad Safety: DOT Should Better Manage Its Hazardous Materials Inspection Program. 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

Waugh, D.L. (2012) From forgotten to remembered: The long process of school desegregation in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Prince Edward County, Virginia

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

Donohue, J.J., Iii and Schoening, M. (2017) The Grim Reaper of Alabama. New York Times. A17

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	Biochemical Society Transactions
Abbreviation	Biochem. Soc. Trans.
ISSN (print)	0300-5127
ISSN (online)	1470-8752
Scope	Biochemistry