How to format your references using the Biochemical Systematics and Ecology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Biochemical Systematics and Ecology. 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 reference managers.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Eisenstein, M., 2009. Neural circuits: Putting neurons on the map. Nature 461, 1149–1152.
A journal article with 2 authors
Chemla, Y.R., Ha, T., 2014. Biophysics. Ultraslow relaxation of confined DNA. Science 345, 380–381.
A journal article with 3 authors
Li, L.Y., Luo, X., Wang, X., 2001. Endonuclease G is an apoptotic DNase when released from mitochondria. Nature 412, 95–99.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Wunderlich, T., Akgenc, B., Eckern, U., Schuster, C., Schwingenschlögl, U., 2013. Modified Li chains as atomic switches. Sci. Rep. 3, 2605.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Frantzen, A.J., 2012. Anglo-Saxon Keywords. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.
An edited book
Ahuja, S., 2012. Low Power Design with High-Level Power Estimation and Power-Aware Synthesis. Springer, New York, NY.
A chapter in an edited book
Fernandez-Breis, J.T., Iannone, L., Palmisano, I., Rector, A.L., Stevens, R., 2010. Enriching the Gene Ontology via the Dissection of Labels Using the Ontology Pre-processor Language, in: Cimiano, P., Pinto, H.S. (Eds.), Knowledge Engineering and Management by the Masses: 17th International Conference, EKAW 2010, Lisbon, Portugal, October 11-15, 2010. Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 59–73.

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 Systematics and Ecology.

Blog post
Carpineti, A., 2016. Quantum Property Of Vacuum Finally Observed Thanks To Neutron Star [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/space/quantum-property-of-vacuum-finally-observed-thanks-to-neutron-star/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 2004. Federal Family Education Loan Program: Statutory and Regulatory Changes Could Avert Billions in Unnecessary Federal Subsidy Payments (No. GAO-04-1070). 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
Hayes, E.T., 2012. Musical improvisation and the creative process (Doctoral dissertation). University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD.

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
Winerip, M., Schwirtz, M., 2015. Federal Inquiry on Rikers Turns to Union Chief. New York Times A1.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Eisenstein, 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Chemla and Ha, 2014; Eisenstein, 2009).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

  • Two authors: (Chemla and Ha, 2014)
  • Three or more authors: (Wunderlich et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal titleBiochemical Systematics and Ecology
AbbreviationBiochem. Syst. Ecol.
ISSN (print)0305-1978
ScopeEcology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Biochemistry

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