How to format your references using the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Biological Journal of the Linnean Society (BJLS). 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

Kojevnikov A. 2007. Russian science: the little ball made science bigger. Nature 449: 542.

A journal article with 2 authors

Sanders RW & Moore JP. 2014. HIV: A stamp on the envelope. Nature 514: 437–438.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kayser MS, Yue Z & Sehgal A. 2014. A critical period of sleep for development of courtship circuitry and behavior in Drosophila. Science (New York, N.Y.) 344: 269–274.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Pavesi L, Dal Negro L, Mazzoleni C, Franzò G & Priolo F. 2000. Optical gain in silicon nanocrystals. Nature 408: 440–444.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Chartered Institute of Building. 2014. Code of Practice for Project Management for Construction and Development. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Bainbridge WS (Ed.). 2010. Online Worlds: Convergence of the Real and the Virtual. London: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

O’Hern DM & Nozaki Y. 2014. Kenyan Education. In: Nozaki Y, ed. Natural Science Education, Indigenous Knowledge, and Sustainable Development in Rural and Urban Schools in Kenya: Toward Critical Postcolonial Curriculum Policies and Practices. Rotterdam: SensePublishers, 47–62.

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 Journal of the Linnean Society.

Blog post

Luntz S. 2015. Bacteria Can Make Zero-Viscosity Superfluids. IFLScience.

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. 1978. Federal Capitation Support and Its Role in the Operation of Medical Schools. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Reehal G. 2012. Designing Low Power and High Performance Network-on-Chip Communication Architectures for Nanometer SoCs.

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

de la MERCED MJ. 2017. Walmart to Acquire Bonobos for $310 Million. New York Times: B4.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Kojevnikov, 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Kojevnikov, 2007; Sanders & Moore, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Sanders & Moore, 2014)
Three authors: (Kayser, Yue, & Sehgal, 2014)
4 or more authors: (Pavesi et al., 2000)

About the journal

Full journal title	Biological Journal of the Linnean Society
Abbreviation	Biol. J. Linn. Soc. Lond.
ISSN (print)	0024-4066
ISSN (online)	1095-8312
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics