How to format your references using the Biomimetics citation style

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

Blandford, R.D. A Century of General Relativity: Astrophysics and Cosmology. Science 2015, 347, 1103–1108.

A journal article with 2 authors

Tirlapur, U.K.; König, K. Targeted Transfection by Femtosecond Laser. Nature 2002, 418, 290–291.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sharp, D.J.; Rogers, G.C.; Scholey, J.M. Microtubule Motors in Mitosis. Nature 2000, 407, 41–47.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Nürnberg, D.J.; Morton, J.; Santabarbara, S.; Telfer, A.; Joliot, P.; Antonaru, L.A.; Ruban, A.V.; Cardona, T.; Krausz, E.; Boussac, A.; et al. Photochemistry beyond the Red Limit in Chlorophyll F-Containing Photosystems. Science 2018, 360, 1210–1213.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Birla, R. Introduction to Tissue Engineering; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ, 2014; ISBN 9781118886410.

An edited book

Rios, P. de M. Symbol Correspondences for Spin Systems; Straume, E., Ed.; Springer International Publishing: Cham, 2014; ISBN 9783319081977.

A chapter in an edited book

Ren, F.; Zhai, J. Contemporary Demands for Science and Technology Communication and Popularization. In Communication and Popularization of Science and Technology in China; Zhai, J., Ed.; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2014; pp. 127–158 ISBN 9783642395604.

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 Biomimetics.

Blog post

O`Callaghan, J. Comet 67P Was Made By Two Bodies Merging Together, New Evidence Suggests Available online: https://www.iflscience.com/space/comet-67p-was-made-two-bodies-merging-together-fresh-evidence-suggests/ (accessed on 30 October 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

Government Accountability Office Electronic Government: Funding of the Office of Management and Budget’s Initiatives; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 2005;

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Kuqi, K. A Matrix-Based Method for Optimizing the User Interface Design of Electronic Medical Record Systems. Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University: Washington, DC, 2013.

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

Ewing, J.; Tabuchi, H.; Protess, B. Volkswagen Said to Be Near Deal With U.S. in Diesel Case. New York Times 2017, B1.

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	Biomimetics
Abbreviation	Biomimetics (Basel)
ISSN (online)	2313-7673
Scope