How to format your references using the Biological Theory citation style

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

Kronenberg HM (2003) Developmental regulation of the growth plate. Nature 423:332–336

A journal article with 2 authors

Saha K, Hurlbut JB (2011) Research ethics: Treat donors as partners in biobank research. Nature 478:312–313

A journal article with 3 authors

Mayor M, Lovis C, Santos NC (2014) Doppler spectroscopy as a path to the detection of Earth-like planets. Nature 513:328–335

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Staller P, Sulitkova J, Lisztwan J, et al (2003) Chemokine receptor CXCR4 downregulated by von Hippel-Lindau tumour suppressor pVHL. Nature 425:307–311

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Parashar RK (2008) Reaction Mechanisms in Organic Synthesis. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., West Sussex, United Kingdom

An edited book

Wang W, Li Y, Duan Z, et al (eds) (2007) Integration and Innovation Orient to E-Society Volume 2: Seventh IFIP International Conference on e-Business, e-Services, and e-Society (13E2007), October 10–12, Wuhan, China. Springer US, Boston, MA

A chapter in an edited book

Resmerita S, Derler P, Pree W, Naderlinger A (2010) 5 Modeling and Simulation of TDL Applications. In: Giese H, Karsai G, Lee E, et al. (eds) Model-Based Engineering of Embedded Real-Time Systems: International Dagstuhl Workshop, Dagstuhl Castle, Germany, November 4-9, 2007. Revised Selected Papers. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 107–128

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 Theory.

Blog post

Andrew E (2014) Scientists Edge Closer To Stem Cell Therapy For Parkinson’s. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/scientists-edge-closer-stem-cell-therapy-parkinsons/. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (2010) B-2 Bomber: Review of the Air Force’s Decision to Change Extremely High Frequency Satellite Communications Antennas. 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

Solari S (2009) A unified anatomical theory and computational model of cognitive information processing in the mammalian brain and the introduction of DNA reco codes. Doctoral dissertation, University of California San Diego

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

Walsh MW (2011) Contractor’s Work Faulted At U.S. Pension Guarantor. New York Times B1

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Kronenberg 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Kronenberg 2003; Saha and Hurlbut 2011).

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

Two authors: (Saha and Hurlbut 2011)
Three or more authors: (Staller et al. 2003)

About the journal

Full journal title	Biological Theory
Abbreviation	Biol. Theory
ISSN (print)	1555-5542
ISSN (online)	1555-5550
Scope