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

Colman, S.M. (2002) Paleoclimate. A fresh look at glacial floods. Science (New York, N.Y.) 296(5571), 1251–1252.

A journal article with 2 authors

Frank, M.C. & Goodman, N.D. (2012) Predicting pragmatic reasoning in language games. Science (New York, N.Y.) 336(6084), 998.

A journal article with 3 authors

Depew, M.J., Lufkin, T. & Rubenstein, J.L.R. (2002) Specification of jaw subdivisions by Dlx genes. Science (New York, N.Y.) 298(5592), 381–385.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Greaves, S.J. et al. (2008) Vibrational excitation through tug-of-war inelastic collisions. Nature 454(7200), 88–91.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Voldman, S.H. (2006) ESD, Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Hülsmann, M. & Pfeffermann, N. eds. (2011) Strategies and Communications for Innovations: An Integrative Management View for Companies and Networks, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

De Waele, M. & Van Schil, P.E. (2014) Remediastinoscopy. In: M. Zieliński & R. Rami-Porta (eds.) The Transcervical Approach in Thoracic Surgery. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 37–44.

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) The 12 Most Controversial Facts In Mathematics. 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 (2013) K-12 Education: States’ Test Security Policies and Procedures Varied, 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

Wright, E.A. (2012) Assessing Leadership Behaviors and Demographic Characteristics of Project Managers Associated Through LinkedIn. Doctoral dissertation. Scottsdale, AZ: Northcentral University.

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

de la MERCED, M.J. (2017) Huntsman Is Said to Be Close to Merger With Clariant. New York Times, 22 May:p. B6.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Colman 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Colman 2002; Frank and Goodman 2012).

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

Two authors: (Frank and Goodman 2012)
Three or more authors: (Greaves et al. 2008)

About the journal

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