How to format your references using the Biotechnology Letters citation style

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

Fitzgerald G (2010) Drug development needs a new brand of science. Nature 468:869

A journal article with 2 authors

Catterall WA, Scott JD (2010) Retrospective. Edwin G. Krebs (1918-2009). Science 327:537

A journal article with 3 authors

Lapointe CP, Mason TG, Smalyukh II (2009) Shape-controlled colloidal interactions in nematic liquid crystals. Science 326:1083–1086

A journal article with 5 or more authors

McKinnon JS, Mori S, Blackman BK, et al (2004) Evidence for ecology’s role in speciation. Nature 429:294–298

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Greiman VA (2013) Megaproject Management. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Boquet P, Lemichez E (eds) (2005) Bacterial Virulence Factors and Rho GTPases. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Ham J, Spahn A (2015) Shall I Show You Some Other Shirts Too? The Psychology and Ethics of Persuasive Robots. In: Trappl R (ed) A Construction Manual for Robots’ Ethical Systems: Requirements, Methods, Implementations. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 63–81

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 Biotechnology Letters.

Blog post

Andrew D (2016) Alzheimer’s Is Slowly Giving Up Its Secrets – And ‘Risk Genes’ Are Just One Piece Of The Puzzle. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/alzheimers-is-slowly-giving-up-its-secrets-and-risk-genes-are-just-one-piece-of-the-puzzle/. 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

Government Accountability Office (1990) FAA Procurement: Competition for Major Data-Processing Project Was Unjustifiably Limited. 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

Schick VR (2010) Examining the vulva: The relationship between female genital aesthetic perceptions and gynecological care. Doctoral dissertation, George Washington 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

Herrman J (2017) What Will Service Work Look Like Under Amazon? New York Times MM16

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Fitzgerald 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Catterall and Scott 2010; Fitzgerald 2010).

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

Two authors: (Catterall and Scott 2010)
Three or more authors: (McKinnon et al. 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	Biotechnology Letters
Abbreviation	Biotechnol. Lett.
ISSN (print)	0141-5492
ISSN (online)	1573-6776
Scope	Biotechnology General Medicine