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. Reiffel L. Sagan breached security by revealing US work on a lunar bomb project. Nature. 2000;405:13.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Schafer RJ, Moore T. Selective attention from voluntary control of neurons in prefrontal cortex. Science. 2011;332:1568–71.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Verhulst EC, Beukeboom LW, van de Zande L. Maternal control of haplodiploid sex determination in the wasp Nasonia. Science. 2010;328:620–3.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Ghosh M, Song X, Mouneimne G, Sidani M, Lawrence DS, Condeelis JS. Cofilin promotes actin polymerization and defines the direction of cell motility. Science. 2004;304:743–6.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Mackevičius V. Integral and Measure. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2014.

An edited book

1. Scher CS, editor. Anesthesia for Trauma: New Evidence and New Challenges. New York, NY: Springer; 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Lord JS, Brooks DR. Bat Endoparasites: A UK Perspective. In: Klimpel S, Mehlhorn H, editors. Bats (Chiroptera) as Vectors of Diseases and Parasites: Facts and Myths. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2014. p. 63–86.

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. Hale T. Scientists Hypnotize Baby Sea Turtles For Science. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2016.

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. Examination of the Social Security Administration’s Systems Modernization Plan. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1982 May. Report No.: HRD-82-83.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Whittle CM. The genomic distribution and function of NFI and histone variant H2A.Z during Caenorhabditis elegans development [Doctoral dissertation]. [Chapel Hill, NC]: University of North Carolina; 2009.

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. Feeney K. Quick Bite/Millburn; When in Essex, Shop as the Romans Do. New York Times. 2006 Jan 1;14NJ10.

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

Research and Writing Guides