How to format your references using the Biological Reviews citation style

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

Long, J.C.S. (2011) Piecemeal cuts won’t add up to radical reductions. Nature 478, 429.

A journal article with 2 authors

Krieger, M.J.B. & Ross, K.G. (2002) Identification of a major gene regulating complex social behavior. Science (New York, N.Y.) 295, 328–332.

A journal article with 3 authors

Chandra, F.A., Buzi, G. & Doyle, J.C. (2011) Glycolytic oscillations and limits on robust efficiency. Science (New York, N.Y.) 333, 187–192.

A journal article with 16 or more authors

Tatsuo, H., Ono, N., Tanaka, K. & Yanagi, Y. (2000) SLAM (CDw150) is a cellular receptor for measles virus. Nature 406, 893–897.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Dal Pont, J.-P. & Azzaro-Pantel, C. (2014) New Approaches to the Process Industries. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Decker, H., Lhotská, L., Link, S., Spies, M. & Wagner, R.R. (eds) (2014) Database and Expert Systems Applications: 25th International Conference, DEXA 2014, Munich, Germany, September 1-4, 2014. Proceedings, Part II. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

Grossmann, H. (2009) Additional Texts on Mechanism. In The Social and Economic Roots of the Scientific Revolution: Texts by Boris Hessen and Henryk Grossmann (eds G. Freudenthal & P. McLaughlin), pp. 231–237. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.

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 Reviews.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2014) Scientists Generate Sperm Precursors From Skin Cells Of Infertile Men. IFLScience. IFLScience. Https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/scientists-generate-sperm-precursors-skin-cells-infertile-men/ [accessed 30 October 2018].

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 (1987) Decisions of the Comptroller General of the United States, Volume 67, November 1987. 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

Racho, M.O. (2012) Attributes of Asian American senior leaders who have retained their cultural identity and been successful in American corporations. Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University, Malibu, 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

Wagner, J. (2017) Bullpen Wastes a Sparkling Performance by deGrom. New York Times, SP3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Long, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Krieger & Ross, 2002; Long, 2011).

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

Two authors: (Krieger & Ross, 2002)
Three authors: (Chandra, Buzi & Doyle, 2011)
4 or more authors: (Tatsuo et al., 2000)

About the journal

Full journal title	Biological Reviews
Abbreviation	Biol. Rev. Camb. Philos. Soc.
ISSN (print)	1464-7931
ISSN (online)	1469-185X
Scope	General Agricultural and Biological Sciences General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology