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:

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 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

Fisk, D., 2012. The Urban Challenge. Science 336, 1396–1397.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hsieh, H.H., Jewitt, D., 2006. A population of comets in the main asteroid belt. Science 312, 561–563.

A journal article with 3 authors

Buffetaut, E., Martill, D., Escuillié, F., 2004. Pterosaurs as part of a spinosaur diet. Nature 430, 33.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Covert, M.W., Knight, E.M., Reed, J.L., Herrgard, M.J., Palsson, B.O., 2004. Integrating high-throughput and computational data elucidates bacterial networks. Nature 429, 92–96.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Geisser, S., 2005. Modes of Parametric Statistical Inference: Geisser/Modes of Parametric Statistical Inference, Wiley Series in Probability and Statistics. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Zalevsky, Z. (Ed.), 2011. Super-Resolved Imaging: Geometrical and Diffraction Approaches, 1st ed, SpringerBriefs in Physics. Springer, New York, NY.

A chapter in an edited book

Nimmerjahn, F., 2013. Molecular and Cellular Pathways Involved in the Anti-inflammatory Activity of IgG, in: Nimmerjahn, F. (Ed.), Molecular and Cellular Mechanisms of Antibody Activity. Springer, New York, NY, pp. 113–138.

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

O`Callaghan, J., 2016. Elon Musk Reveals His “Master Plan” To Rule The Electric World [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/technology/elon-musk-reveals-his-master-plan-to-rule-the-electric-world/ (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. Distance Learning: Opportunities Exist for DOD to Capitalize on Services’ Efforts (No. NSIAD-98-63R). 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

Moreau, E.L., 2014. Sailing on a Sea of Hope: Exploring the Impact of Federal Consolidation on Individual Identification and Organizational Identity (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

Kelly, S., 2000. Books in Brief: Fiction. New York Times 721.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Fisk, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Fisk, 2012; Hsieh and Jewitt, 2006).

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

Two authors: (Hsieh and Jewitt, 2006)
Three or more authors: (Covert et al., 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	Biological Conservation
Abbreviation	Biol. Conserv.
ISSN (print)	0006-3207
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Nature and Landscape Conservation