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

Nel, A. (2005) Atmosphere. Air pollution-related illness: effects of particles. Science (New York, N.Y.) 308, 804–806.

A journal article with 2 authors

Benton, M.J. & Ayala, F.J. (2003) Dating the tree of life. Science (New York, N.Y.) 300, 1698–1700.

A journal article with 3 authors

Baum, P., Yang, D.-S. & Zewail, A.H. (2007) 4D visualization of transitional structures in phase transformations by electron diffraction. Science (New York, N.Y.) 318, 788–792.

A journal article with 16 or more authors

Freitas-Junior, L.H., Bottius, E., Pirrit, L.A., Deitsch, K.W., Scheidig, C., Guinet, F., Nehrbass, U., Wellems, T.E. & Scherf, A. (2000) Frequent ectopic recombination of virulence factor genes in telomeric chromosome clusters of P. falciparum. Nature 407, 1018–1022.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kovalev, V.A. (2015) Solutions in Lidar Profiling of the Atmosphere. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Hameurlain, A., Küng, J. & Wagner, R. (eds) (2012) Transactions on Large-Scale Data- and Knowledge-Centered Systems V. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Bruns, E., Ohlhorst, D., Wenzel, B. & Köppel, J. (2011) Innovation Conditions in the Case of Solar Power Generation. In Renewable Energies in Germany’s Electricity Market: A Biography of the Innovation Process (eds D. Ohlhorst, B. Wenzel & J. Köppel), pp. 161–228. 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. (2015) Company Claims Their Flying Car Will Hit Markets In Two Years. IFLScience. IFLScience. Https://www.iflscience.com/technology/company-claims-their-flying-car-will-hit-markets-two-years/ [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 (1988) Close Air Support: Status of the Air Force’s Efforts to Replace the A-10 Aircraft. 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

Holbert, M. (2010) Knowledge is power (KIP): Kinship caregiver support group program curriculum. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, 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

Gordon, M.R. & Schmitt, E. (2017) Russian Exercise On NATO Border Has U.S. on Alert. New York Times, A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Nel, 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Benton & Ayala, 2003; Nel, 2005).

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

Two authors: (Benton & Ayala, 2003)
Three authors: (Baum, Yang & Zewail, 2007)
4 or more authors: (Freitas-Junior 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