How to format your references using the BioSystems citation style

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

Lazar, M.A., 2008. Developmental biology. How now, brown fat? Science 321, 1048–1049.

A journal article with 2 authors

Lybarger, S.R., Sandkvist, M., 2004. Microbiology. A hitchhiker’s guide to type IV secretion. Science 304, 1122–1123.

A journal article with 3 authors

Akbarzadeh, A., Qiu, C.-W., Danner, A.J., 2013. Exploiting design freedom in biaxial dielectrics to enable spatially overlapping optical instruments. Sci. Rep. 3, 2055.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Boussau, B., Blanquart, S., Necsulea, A., Lartillot, N., Gouy, M., 2008. Parallel adaptations to high temperatures in the Archaean eon. Nature 456, 942–945.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ferguson, N., Schneier, B., Kohno, T., 2015. Cryptography Engineering. Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana.

An edited book

Kawachi, I., Subramanian, S.V., Kim, D. (Eds.), 2008. Social Capital and Health. Springer, New York, NY.

A chapter in an edited book

Clemente, P., Lasagna, M., Dino, G.A., De Luca, D.A., 2015. Comparison of Different Methods for Detecting Irrigation Canals Leakage, in: Lollino, G., Arattano, M., Rinaldi, M., Giustolisi, O., Marechal, J.-C., Grant, G.E. (Eds.), Engineering Geology for Society and Territory - Volume 3: River Basins, Reservoir Sedimentation and Water Resources. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 23–26.

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 BioSystems.

Blog post

Hale, T., 2016. What’s The Absolute Farthest You Can Get On Planet Earth From Any Other Human Beings? [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/environment/whats-the-absolute-farthest-you-can-get-on-planet-earth-from-any-other-human-beings/ (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, 2016. Unmanned Carrier-Based Aircraft System: Debate over System’s Role Led to Focus on Aerial Refueling (No. GAO-16-389R). 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

Tajer, S.A., 2010. Topics in MIMO networks (Doctoral dissertation). Columbia University, New York, NY.

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

Kishkovsky, S., 2017. Yuri Drozdov, 91, Top Spy For K.G.B. Who Planted Agents Around the Globe. New York Times B14.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Lazar, 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Lazar, 2008; Lybarger and Sandkvist, 2004).

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

Two authors: (Lybarger and Sandkvist, 2004)
Three or more authors: (Boussau et al., 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	BioSystems
Abbreviation	Biosystems.
ISSN (print)	0303-2647
Scope	General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology Applied Mathematics Modelling and Simulation Statistics and Probability General Medicine