How to format your references using the Achievements in the Life Sciences citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Achievements in the Life Sciences. 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 references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles 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

Middelburg, J.J., 2015. Oceanography. Escape by dilution. Science 348, 290.

A journal article with 2 authors

Jones-Smith, K., Mathur, H., 2006. Fractal Analysis: revisiting Pollock’s drip paintings. Nature 444, E9-10; discussion E10-11.

A journal article with 3 authors

Blois, J.L., McGuire, J.L., Hadly, E.A., 2010. Small mammal diversity loss in response to late-Pleistocene climatic change. Nature 465, 771–774.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Xiang, Z., Kasahara, Y., Asaba, T., Lawson, B., Tinsman, C., Chen, L., Sugimoto, K., Kawaguchi, S., Sato, Y., Li, G., Yao, S., Chen, Y.L., Iga, F., Singleton, J., Matsuda, Y., Li, L., 2018. Quantum oscillations of electrical resistivity in an insulator. Science 362, 65–69.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Epperlein, P.W., 2013. Semiconductor Laser Engineering, Reliability and Diagnostics. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Oxford, UK.

An edited book

Bertelsen, O.W., Ciolfi, L., Grasso, M.A., Papadopoulos, G.A. (Eds.), 2013. ECSCW 2013: Proceedings of the 13th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 21-25 September 2013, Paphos, Cyprus. Springer, London.

A chapter in an edited book

Postema, P.G., Van den Berg, M.P., Van Tintelen, J.P., Van den Heuvel, F., Grundeken, M., Hofman, N., Van der Roest, W.P., Nannenberg, E.A., Krapels, I.P.C., Bezzina, C.R., Wilde, A.A.M., 2014. Founder mutations in the Netherlands: SCN5a 1795insD, the first described arrhythmia overlap syndrome and one of the largest and best characterised families worldwide*, in: Wilde, Arthur A. M., Tintelen, J.P. van (Eds.), Founder Mutations in Inherited Cardiac Diseases in the Netherlands. Bohn Stafleu van Loghum, Houten, pp. 21–27.

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 Achievements in the Life Sciences.

Blog post

Davis, J., 2015. Scientists Detail Naked Mole-Rats’ Unique Anti-Cancer Gene [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/naked-mole-rats-unique-anti-cancer-gene/ (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, 1997. FCC: Ka-Band Satellite Application and Licensing Procedure (No. OGC-98-15). 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

Johnson, L., 2010. A cross-cultural examination of the needs and behaviors of female caregivers of cancer patients at the end of life: A theoretical elaboration (Doctoral dissertation). George Washington University, Washington, DC.

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

Vecsey, G., 2016. Ambassador Ali. New York Times F14.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Middelburg, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Jones-Smith and Mathur, 2006; Middelburg, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Jones-Smith and Mathur, 2006)
Three or more authors: (Xiang et al., 2018)

About the journal

Full journal title	Achievements in the Life Sciences
ISSN (print)	2078-1520
Scope