How to format your references using the Mathematical Biosciences citation style

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

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most reference managers.
BibTeXBibTeX 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]
P. Wickware, Progress from a fragile start, Nature 403 (2000) 466.
A journal article with 2 authors
[1]
B. Ye, N. Cramer, Chiral cyclopentadienyl ligands as stereocontrolling element in asymmetric C-H functionalization, Science 338 (2012) 504–506.
A journal article with 3 authors
[1]
K. Takahashi, K. Mitsui, S. Yamanaka, Role of ERas in promoting tumour-like properties in mouse embryonic stem cells, Nature 423 (2003) 541–545.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
[1]
X. Wang, S.-M. Huong, M.L. Chiu, N. Raab-Traub, E.-S. Huang, Epidermal growth factor receptor is a cellular receptor for human cytomegalovirus, Nature 424 (2003) 456–461.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
[1]
M.D. Matlock, R.A. Morgan, Ecological Engineering Design, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2011.
An edited book
[1]
O. Hazzan, Agile Software Engineering, Springer, London, 2008.
A chapter in an edited book
[1]
W. van Breda, J. Pastor, M. Hoogendoorn, J. Ruwaard, J. Asselbergs, H. Riper, Exploring and Comparing Machine Learning Approaches for Predicting Mood Over Time, in: Y.-W. Chen, S. Tanaka, R.J. Howlett, L.C. Jain (Eds.), Innovation in Medicine and Healthcare 2016, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2016: pp. 37–47.

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.

Blog post
[1]
J. O`Callaghan, Scientists Have Peered Inside The Dwarf Planet Ceres For The First Time, IFLScience (2016).

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, Next Generation Air Transportation System: Status of Key Issues Associated with the Transition to NextGen, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2008.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
[1]
N. Grayson, Development of a preliminary scale of counterproductive experiences in supervision: Attitudes of clinical psychology doctoral students, Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University, 2014.

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]
M. Schuman, Fresh Worries in an Old Problem for the Global Market: Rising Debt in China, New York Times (2017) B6.

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 titleMathematical Biosciences
AbbreviationMath. Biosci.
ISSN (print)0025-5564
ScopeGeneral Agricultural and Biological Sciences
General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
General Immunology and Microbiology
Applied Mathematics
Modelling and Simulation
Statistics and Probability
General Medicine

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