How to format your references using the Open Network Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Open Network 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	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. Buchanan M. Economics: Meltdown modelling. Nature. 2009;460:680–2.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Vollmer D, Butt H-J. Materials science: Droplets leap into action. Nature. 2015;527:41–2.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Mlynarski SN, Schuster CH, Morken JP. Asymmetric synthesis from terminal alkenes by cascades of diboration and cross-coupling. Nature. 2014;505:386–90.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Novoselov KS, Geim AK, Morozov SV, Jiang D, Zhang Y, Dubonos SV, et al. Electric field effect in atomically thin carbon films. Science. 2004;306:666–9.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Freeman RL. Fundamentals of Telecommunications. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2005.

An edited book

1. Mastrolia P. Yamabe-type Equations on Complete, Noncompact Manifolds. Basel: Springer; 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Liu A, Yuan L, Wang J, Zhang T. Performance Analysis of Interference Localization Based on Doppler Frequency Shift of a Single Satellite. In: Sun J, Jiao W, Wu H, Shi C, editors. China Satellite Navigation Conference (CSNC) 2013 Proceedings: BeiDou/GNSS Navigation Applications • Test & Assessment Technology • User Terminal Technology. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2013. p. 35–43.

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 Open Network Biology.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Here’s What 1930s Fashion Designers Thought We’d Be Wearing In The Year 2000. IFLScience. 2015. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/heres-what-1930s-fashion-designers-thought-wed-be-wearing-year-2000/. 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. National Weather Service: Budget Events and Continuing Risks of Systems Modernization. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1998.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Picchini AM. Neurogenesis in the adult hippocampus: Modulation of stem cell fate by experience. 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

1. Koblin J. Jane Pauley to Anchor CBS’s ‘Sunday Morning.’ New York Times. 2016;:B2.

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	Open Network Biology
ISSN (print)	2046-7826
Scope