How to format your references using the Systems Biomedicine citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Systems Biomedicine. 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

Haber JE. Comment on “Cell type regulates selective segregation of mouse chromosome 7 DNA strands in mitosis.” Science 2006; 313:1045; author reply 1045.

A journal article with 2 authors

Nesbit J, Bradford M. 2008 Visualization Challenge. Science 2008; 321:1767.

A journal article with 3 authors

Tran J, Brenner TJ, DiNardo S. Somatic control over the germline stem cell lineage during Drosophila spermatogenesis. Nature 2000; 407:754–7.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Wachowiak A, Wiebe J, Bode M, Pietzsch O, Morgenstern M, Wiesendanger R. Direct observation of internal spin structure of magnetic vortex cores. Science 2002; 298:577–80.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Beecken WH, Beecken CA. Fraud Examination Casebook with Documents. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2017.

An edited book

Priyadarshan PM, Jain SM, editors. Breeding Plantation Tree Crops: Temperate Species. New York, NY: Springer; 2009.

A chapter in an edited book

Hartlep ND, Scott DP. High School. In: Scott DP, editor. Asian/American Curricular Epistemicide: From Being Excluded to Becoming a Model Minority. Rotterdam: SensePublishers; 2016. page 69–79.

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 Systems Biomedicine.

Blog post

O`Callaghan J. NASA Just Revealed 12 New Astronauts - But No One Knows Where They’re Going. IFLScience2017;

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. Maritime Administration: Stronger Management Controls Needed Over Vessels in Title XI Custody. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1992.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Noxon C. Sedentism, Agriculture, and the Neolithic Demographic Transition: Insights from Jōmon Paleodemography. 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

Leland J. Dance Moves, Everywhere. New York Times2017; :MB8.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

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	Systems Biomedicine
Abbreviation	Syst. Biomed. (Austin)
ISSN (print)	2162-8130
ISSN (online)	2162-8149
Scope