How to format your references using the Biological Research citation style

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

1. Brock DW. Human cloning and our sense of self. Science. 2002;296:314–6.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Hedstrom L, Frey PA. Robert H. Abeles (1926-2000). Nature. 2000;407:854.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Oliet SH, Piet R, Poulain DA. Control of glutamate clearance and synaptic efficacy by glial coverage of neurons. Science. 2001;292:923–6.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Baur JA, Zou Y, Shay JW, Wright WE. Telomere position effect in human cells. Science. 2001;292:2075–7.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Anaya-Lara O, Campos-Gaona D, Moreno-Goytia E, Adam G. Offshore Wind Energy Generation. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2014.

An edited book

1. Gürlebeck K. Application of Holomorphic Functions in Two and Higher Dimensions. Habetha K, Sprößig W, editors. Basel: Springer; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Banichuk N, Jeronen J, Neittaanmäki P, Saksa T, Tuovinen T. Non-Homogeneous Tension Profile. In: Jeronen J, Neittaanmäki P, Saksa T, Tuovinen T, editors. Mechanics of Moving Materials. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2014. p. 69–88.

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 Research.

Blog post

1. Carpineti A. Northern Lights Spectacle Expected During Solar Storm [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2016 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/space/northern-lights-spectacle-expected-during-solar-storm/

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

1. Government Accountability Office. Performance Measurement: Efforts to Evaluate the Advanced Technology Program. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1995 May. Report No.: RCED-95-68.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Metcalfe AC. Using Evolution as a Context for Teaching the Nature of Science to Diverse Student Populations: A High School Unit of Curriculum [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 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

1. (nyt) SK. World Briefing | Europe: Ukraine: Russia Lifts Arrest For Ex-Premier. New York Times. 2005 Sep 27;A9.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

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	Biological Research
ISSN (online)	0717-6287
Scope