How to format your references using the Biology Open citation style

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

Zelkowitz, R. (2008). 2008 Visualization Challenge winners. Science 321, 1768.

A journal article with 2 authors

Wang, Y. and Dohlman, H. G. (2004). Pheromone signaling mechanisms in yeast: a prototypical sex machine. Science 306, 1508–1509.

A journal article with 3 authors

Loudet, J. C., Barois, P. and Poulin, P. (2000). Colloidal ordering from phase separation in a liquid-crystalline continuous phase. Nature 407, 611–613.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Akashi, K., Traver, D., Miyamoto, T. and Weissman, I. L. (2000). A clonogenic common myeloid progenitor that gives rise to all myeloid lineages. Nature 404, 193–197.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Stone, C. A. and Zissu, A. (2012). The Securitization Markets Handbook. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Agarwal, R. P. (2014). Oscillation and Stability of Delay Models in Biology. (ed. O’Regan, D.) and Saker, S. H.) Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Andrews, M. (2012). Learning from Stories, Stories of Learning. In Explorations in Narrative Research (ed. Goodson, I. F.), Loveless, A. M.), and Stephens, D.), pp. 33–41. Rotterdam: SensePublishers.

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 Biology Open.

Blog post

Luntz, S. (2014). Unexpected Reptilian Survivor of Dinosaurs’ Destruction. IFLScience.

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 (2003). Commercial Aviation: Factors Affecting Efforts to Improve Air Service at Small Community Airports. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Garcia, A. D. (2013). Long-term shifts in adolescent Nicotine reward following early methylphenidate exposure in male and female rats.

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

Brantley, B. (2016). Deftly Conjuring the High Magic of Art. New York Times C1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Zelkowitz, 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Wang and Dohlman, 2004; Zelkowitz, 2008).

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

Two authors: (Wang and Dohlman, 2004)
Three or more authors: (Akashi et al., 2000)

About the journal

Full journal title	Biology Open
Abbreviation	Biol. Open
ISSN (online)	2046-6390
Scope