How to format your references using the Journal of Biological Engineering citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Biological Engineering. 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

1. Vedral V. Quantifying entanglement in macroscopic systems. Nature. 2008;453:1004–7.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Jackson MG, Carlson RW. An ancient recipe for flood-basalt genesis. Nature. 2011;476:316–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Briggman KL, Abarbanel HDI, Kristan WB Jr. Optical imaging of neuronal populations during decision-making. Science. 2005;307:896–901.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. McElroy MB, Lu X, Nielsen CP, Wang Y. Potential for wind-generated electricity in China. Science. 2009;325:1378–80.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Lenk R, Lenk C. Practical Lighting Design With LEDs. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2011.

An edited book

1. Kim T-H, Yang LT, Park JH, Chang AC-C, Vasilakos T, Yeo S-S, editors. Advances in Communication and Networking: Second International Conference on Future Generation Communication and Networking, FGCN 2008, Sanya, Hainan Island, China, December 13-15, 2008. Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2009.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Sverdlov V, Selberherr S. Spin-Based CMOS-Compatible Devices. In: Lirkov I, Margenov SD, Waśniewski J, editors. Large-Scale Scientific Computing: 10th International Conference, LSSC 2015, Sozopol, Bulgaria, June 8-12, 2015 Revised Selected Papers. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015. p. 42–9.

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 Journal of Biological Engineering.

Blog post

1. Carpineti A. Intense Underground Stress Forces Mountains To Sprout On Io [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2016 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. https://www.iflscience.com/space/intense-underground-stress-forces-mountains-sprout-io/. 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

1. Government Accountability Office. Space Operations: Archiving Space Science Data Needs Further Management Improvements. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1993 Dec. Report No.: NSIAD-94-25.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Jujhavarapu S. Real Time Driver Drowsiness Detection [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2017.

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

1. Sisario B. ‘Hamilton Mixtape’ No. 1 on Chart. New York Times. 2016 Dec 12;C3.

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	Journal of Biological Engineering
Abbreviation	J. Biol. Eng.
ISSN (online)	1754-1611
Scope	Cell Biology Molecular Biology Biomedical Engineering Environmental Engineering