How to format your references using the BioSocieties citation style

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

Peeples, M.S. (2015) Astronomy: Cosmic fog and smog. Nature 517(7535), 444–445.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ju, T. & Cummings, R.D. (2005) Protein glycosylation: chaperone mutation in Tn syndrome. Nature 437(7063), 1252.

A journal article with 3 authors

Poulsen, C.J., Tabor, C. & White, J.D. (2015) CLIMATE CHANGE. Long-term climate forcing by atmospheric oxygen concentrations. Science (New York, N.Y.) 348(6240), 1238–1241.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Lentink, D. et al. (2007) How swifts control their glide performance with morphing wings. Nature 446(7139), 1082–1085.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Fernando, A., Worrall, S.T. & Ekmekcioǧlu, E. (2013) 3DTV, Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Pehrson, L., Oxelheim, L. & Gustavsson, S. eds. (2009) How Unified Is the European Union?: European Integration Between Visions and Popular Legitimacy, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Craig, W. (2008) Transformation theory of Hamiltonian PDE and the problem of water waves. In: W. Craig (ed.) Hamiltonian Dynamical Systems and Applications. NATO Science for Peace and Security Series. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 67–83.

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 BioSocieties.

Blog post

Andrew, D. (2016) New DNA Study Confirms Ancient Aborigines Were The First Australians. 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 (1971) Assessment of the Teacher Corps Program at the University of Southern California and Participating Schools in Tulare County Serving Rural-Migrant Children, 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

Blalock, J.M. (2014) The Links at St Andrews, Scotland A phenomenological hermeneutic exploration of golf’s primordial place. Doctoral dissertation. Carpinteria, CA: Pacifica Graduate Institute.

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

Yeh, J. (2016) Little Moments. New York Times, 1 December:p. BR44.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Peeples 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Peeples 2015; Ju and Cummings 2005).

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

Two authors: (Ju and Cummings 2005)
Three or more authors: (Lentink et al. 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	BioSocieties
Abbreviation	Biosocieties
ISSN (print)	1745-8552
ISSN (online)	1745-8560
Scope	Health Policy Health(social science)