How to format your references using the Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Mathematical Biosciences and 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

Kaiser J (2015) What does a disease deserve? Science 350: 900–902.

A journal article with 2 authors

Thomas DN, Dieckmann GS (2002) Antarctic Sea ice--a habitat for extremophiles. Science 295: 641–644.

A journal article with 3 authors

Lindenmayer DB, Laurance WF, Franklin JF (2012) Ecology. Global decline in large old trees. Science 338: 1305–1306.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Lacorre P, Goutenoire F, Bohnke O, et al. (2000) Designing fast oxide-ion conductors based on La2Mo2O9. Nature 404: 856–858.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wen S, Huang P (2017) Principles of Tribology, Singapore, John Wiley & Sons Singapore Pte. Ltd.

An edited book

Al-Rubeai M, Fussenegger M (Eds.) (2005) Cell Engineering: Apoptosis, Dordrecht, Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Baartse M, Meer K (2015) An Algebraic Proof of the Real Number PCP Theorem, In: Italiano GF, Pighizzini G, Sannella DT (Eds.), Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science 2015: 40th International Symposium, MFCS 2015, Milan, Italy, August 24-28, 2015, Proceedings, Part II, Berlin, Heidelberg, Springer, 50–61.

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 Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering.

Blog post

Hale T (2016) IFLScience, Scouts And Guides Grow Up To Have Better Mental Health, 2016. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/scouts-and-guides-grow-up-to-have-better-mental-health/.

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 (1972) Examination Into Certain Irregularities Reported as Existing at the Department of Labor Atterbury Job Corps Center near Edinburg, Indiana, Washington, DC, U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Sharma V (2017) Functional Characterization of Na+/Ca2+ Exchangers in Caenorhabditis elegans.

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

Cooper M (2017) Singing With, Not Through, the Nose. New York Times C1.

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	Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering
ISSN (online)	1551-0018
Scope