How to format your references using the Journal of Biotechnology citation style

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

Polyakov, V.B., 2009. Equilibrium iron isotope fractionation at core-mantle boundary conditions. Science 323, 912–914.

A journal article with 2 authors

Frank, T., Friedrich, R.W., 2015. Neurobiology: Individuality sniffed out in flies. Nature 526, 200–201.

A journal article with 3 authors

Dominguez, P., Jacobson, A.G., Jefferies, R.P.S., 2002. Paired gill slits in a fossil with a calcite skeleton. Nature 417, 841–844.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Braddock, D.T., Louis, J.M., Baber, J.L., Levens, D., Clore, G.M., 2002. Structure and dynamics of KH domains from FBP bound to single-stranded DNA. Nature 415, 1051–1056.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Vaseghi, S.V., 2006. Advanced Digital Signal Processing and Noise Reduction. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Altmann, J., Silaghi, G.C., Rana, O.F. (Eds.), 2016. Economics of Grids, Clouds, Systems, and Services: 12th International Conference, GECON 2015, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, September 15-17, 2015, Revised Selected Papers, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

Houy, C., Fettke, P., Loos, P., 2012. Understanding Understandability of Conceptual Models – What Are We Actually Talking about?, in: Atzeni, P., Cheung, D., Ram, S. (Eds.), Conceptual Modeling: 31st International Conference ER 2012, Florence, Italy, October 15-18, 2012. Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 64–77.

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 Biotechnology.

Blog post

Taub, B., 2016. Dragonflies Hold Turf Wars For Control Of Elephants’ Footprints [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/dragonflies-hold-turf-wars-control-elephants-footprints/ (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, 1987. Strategic Forces: Supportability, Maintainability, and Readiness of the B-1B Bomber (No. NSIAD-87-177BR). 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

Yi, Z., 2009. Dynamics of bio-membranes investigated by neutron spin echo: Effects of phospholipid conformations and presence of lidocaine (Doctoral dissertation). Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.

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

Mueller, B., Wang, V., Piccoli, S., 2017. 3 Men From Shelter Held in Sexual Assault on Woman Leaving Church. New York Times A17.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Polyakov, 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Frank and Friedrich, 2015; Polyakov, 2009).

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

Two authors: (Frank and Friedrich, 2015)
Three or more authors: (Braddock et al., 2002)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Biotechnology
Abbreviation	J. Biotechnol.
ISSN (print)	0168-1656
Scope	Biotechnology Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology General Medicine