How to format your references using the Biosemiotics citation style

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

Stankiewicz, B. A. (2003). Integration of geoscience and engineering in the oil industry - just a dream? Nature, 426(6964), 360–363.

A journal article with 2 authors

Levitt, S. D., & List, J. A. (2008). Economics. Homo economicus evolves. Science (New York, N.Y.), 319(5865), 909–910.

A journal article with 3 authors

Pendry, J. B., Martín-Moreno, L., & Garcia-Vidal, F. J. (2004). Mimicking surface plasmons with structured surfaces. Science (New York, N.Y.), 305(5685), 847–848.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Xiang, J., Lu, W., Hu, Y., Wu, Y., Yan, H., & Lieber, C. M. (2006). Ge/Si nanowire heterostructures as high-performance field-effect transistors. Nature, 441(7092), 489–493.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Pandrea, N., & Stănescu, N.-D. (2015). Dynamics of the Rigid Solid with General Constraints by a Multibody Approach. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Dator, J. A. (2015). Mutative Media: Communication Technologies and Power Relations in the Past, Present, and Futures. (J. A. Sweeney & A. M. Yee, Eds.). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Kang, Y. (2016). Bilateral FDI Relations Between China and New Zealand: General Trends, Driving Forces and Perceptions. In Y. Kang (Ed.), China, New Zealand, and the Complexities of Globalization: Asymmetry, Complementarity, and Competition (pp. 141–168). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan US.

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 Biosemiotics.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2014, January 31). Polar bear cub at Toronto Zoo has first experience with snow. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/polar-bear-cub-toronto-zoo-has-first-experience-snow/. 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. (2001). Aviation Security: Weaknesses in Airport Security and Options for Assigning Screening Responsibilities (No. GAO-01-1165T). 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

Choubey, L. (2015). Quantitative Assessment of Fgfr1 Expression in Neurons and Glia of the Developing Mouse Brain (Doctoral dissertation). University of Louisiana, Lafayette, LA.

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

Barron, J. (2017, February 26). Where’s the Art? at a Hamptons Center, Look Behind the Wall. New York Times, p. A18.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Stankiewicz 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Levitt and List 2008; Stankiewicz 2003).

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

Two authors: (Levitt and List 2008)
Three or more authors: (Xiang et al. 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	Biosemiotics
Abbreviation	Biosemiotics
ISSN (print)	1875-1342
ISSN (online)	1875-1350
Scope	Language and Linguistics Social Sciences (miscellaneous) Communication