How to format your references using the BioScience citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for BioScience. 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Wakeham B. 2008. UK physics gets a health check. Nature 455: 592.

A journal article with 2 authors

Martin CH, Wainwright PC. 2013. Multiple fitness peaks on the adaptive landscape drive adaptive radiation in the wild. Science (New York, N.Y.) 339: 208–211.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ford HL, Ravelo AC, Polissar PJ. 2015. Reduced El Niño-Southern Oscillation during the Last Glacial Maximum. Science (New York, N.Y.) 347: 255–258.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Hammerl G, Schmehl A, Schulz RR, Goetz B, Bielefeldt H, Schneider CW, Hilgenkamp H, Mannhart J. 2000. Enhanced supercurrent density in polycrystalline YBa2Cu3O(7-delta) at 77 K from calcium doping of grain boundaries. Nature 407: 162–164.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Fu F. 2015. Advanced Modelling Techniques in Structural Design. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

2014. Front Line Extremity and Orthopaedic Surgery: A Practical Guide. Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Treschev D, Zubelevich O. 2010. The Separatrix Map. Pages 75–92 in Zubelevich O, ed. Introduction to the Perturbation Theory of Hamiltonian Systems. Springer.

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 BioScience.

Blog post

Luntz S. 2016. People With Bipolar Symptoms Wait Six Years On Average For Treatment. IFLScience. (30 October 2018; https://www.iflscience.com/brain/people-with-bipolar-symptoms-wait-six-years-on-average-for-treatment/).

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. 1999. Year 2000 Computing Challenge: Federal Government Making Progress But Critical Issues Must Still Be Addressed to Minimize Disruptions. U.S. Government Printing Office. Report no. T-AIMD-99-144.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Gifford SC. 2013. (Re)making men, representing the Caribbean nation: Authorial individuation in works by Fred D’aguiar, Robert Antoni, and Marlon James. Doctoral dissertation. Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL.

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

Donadio R. 2015. A Russian Art Leader’s Bold Goal: Engaging the West. 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 (Wakeham 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Wakeham 2008, Martin and Wainwright 2013).

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

Two authors: (Martin and Wainwright 2013)
Three or more authors: (Hammerl et al. 2000)

About the journal

Full journal title	BioScience
ISSN (print)	0006-3568
ISSN (online)	1525-3244
Scope