How to format your references using the Biological Conservation citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Biological Conservation. 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 references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Gewin, V., 2005. High-energy career lines. Nature 434, 936–937.
A journal article with 2 authors
Gfeller, A., Farmer, E.E., 2004. Keeping the leaves green above us. Science 306, 1515–1516.
A journal article with 3 authors
Furey, M.L., Pietrini, P., Haxby, J.V., 2000. Cholinergic enhancement and increased selectivity of perceptual processing during working memory. Science 290, 2315–2319.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Pal, A., Shirodkar, S.N., Gohil, S., Ghosh, S., Waghmare, U.V., Ayyub, P., 2013. Multiferroic behavior in elemental selenium below 40 K: effect of electronic topology. Sci. Rep. 3, 2051.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Keegan, K.D., 2008. Biotechnology Valuation. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Oxford, UK.
An edited book
Kluve, J., 2007. Active Labor Market Policies in Europe: Performance and Perspectives. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
A chapter in an edited book
Winokur, T., 2005. Molecular Markers in Breast Cancer, in: Chhieng, D.C., Siegal, G.P. (Eds.), Updates in Diagnostic Pathology, Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology. Springer US, Boston, MA, pp. 35–41.

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 Biological Conservation.

Blog post
Luntz, S., 2014. Largest Lunar Explosion Recorded [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL (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, 1980. H.R. 7178, the Research and Development Authorization Estimates Act (No. 112490). 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
Voma, S.K., 2017. Design of Power Management Circuit for Energy Harvesting Applications (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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
Crow, K., 2002. It’s Still Audrey’s College, Even If Her Name Is Gone. New York Times 146.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Gewin, 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Gewin, 2005; Gfeller and Farmer, 2004).

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

  • Two authors: (Gfeller and Farmer, 2004)
  • Three or more authors: (Pal et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal titleBiological Conservation
AbbreviationBiol. Conserv.
ISSN (print)0006-3207
ScopeEcology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Nature and Landscape Conservation

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