How to format your references using the IET Synthetic Biology citation style

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

Chase, J.M.: ‘Stochastic community assembly causes higher biodiversity in more productive environments’Science, 2010, 328, (5984), pp. 1388–1391.

A journal article with 2 authors

Peñuelas, J., Filella, I.: ‘Phenology. Responses to a warming world’Science, 2001, 294, (5543), pp. 793–795.

A journal article with 3 authors

Miller, J.R., Outlaw, R.A., Holloway, B.C.: ‘Graphene double-layer capacitor with ac line-filtering performance’Science, 2010, 329, (5999), pp. 1637–1639.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Zhang, J., Liu, Y.-X., Ozdemir, S.K., et al.: ‘Quantum internet using code division multiple access’Sci. Rep., 2013, 3, p. 2211.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Deichmann, U.: ‘Flüchten, Mitmachen, Vergessen’ (Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, 2005)

An edited book

Fugini, M.G.: ‘e-Government and Employment Services: A Case Study in Effectiveness’ (Springer International Publishing, 2014)

A chapter in an edited book

Boelryk, A., Amundsen, C.: ‘A Sociocultural Model for Mid-career Post-secondary Teacher Professional Learning’, in Billett, S., Dymock, D., Choy, S. (Eds.): ‘Supporting Learning Across Working Life: Models, Processes and Practices’ (Springer International Publishing, 2016), pp. 91–111

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 IET Synthetic Biology.

Blog post

Andrew, E.: ‘Galactic “Hot-Dog-Eating Competition” Lasts Hundreds Of Millions Of Years’, https://www.iflscience.com/space/galactic-hot-dog-eating-competition-lasts-hundreds-millions-years/, accessed 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: ‘International Aviation: New Competitive Conditions Require Changes in DOT Strategy’ (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1994)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Bao, J.: ‘Design enhancements in repetitive and interative learning control’. Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 2010

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

Wagner, J.: ‘Bumgarner and Big Blast Leave Mets Blanked and Blue’New York Times, 2016, p. B10.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [2].
This sentence cites two references [2, 4].
This sentence cites four references [2, 4, 6, 8].

About the journal

Full journal title	IET Synthetic Biology
ISSN (print)	1752-1394
Scope	Biotechnology Cell Biology Molecular Biology Bioengineering