How to format your references using the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Bulletin of Mathematical Biology. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Koenig R (2000) EUROPEAN SCIENCE: Research Behemoth Slated for Overhaul. Science 289:2019b
A journal article with 2 authors
Ley TJ, Hamilton BH (2008) Sociology. The gender gap in NIH grant applications. Science 322:1472–1474
A journal article with 3 authors
Ellis AS, Johnson TM, Bullen TD (2002) Chromium isotopes and the fate of hexavalent chromium in the environment. Science 295:2060–2062
A journal article with 5 or more authors
Takahashi H, Kato M, Matsuura M, et al (2009) When your gain is my pain and your pain is my gain: neural correlates of envy and schadenfreude. Science 323:937–939

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Davis JH (2011) Statistics for Compensation. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ
An edited book
Seki T, Sawamoto K, Parent JM, Alvarez-Buylla A (eds) (2011) Neurogenesis in the Adult Brain I: Neurobiology. Springer Japan, Tokyo
A chapter in an edited book
Neuburger S, Sokol D (2010) Small-Space 2D Compressed Dictionary Matching. In: Amir A, Parida L (eds) Combinatorial Pattern Matching: 21st Annual Symposium, CPM 2010, New York, NY, USA, June 21-23, 2010. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 27–39

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 Bulletin of Mathematical Biology.

Blog post
O`Callaghan J (2017) SpaceX Just Released An Awesome Video Of Its Reusable Rocket Landing. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/spacex-just-released-an-awesome-video-of-its-reusable-rocket-landing/. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (1999) Information Technology: Comments on Proposed OMB Guidance for Implementing the Government Paperwork Elimination Act. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
Liyakath RA (2012) Reconfigurable Antenna and RF Circuits Using Multi-Layer Stretchable Conductors. Doctoral dissertation, University of South Florida

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
Wagner J (2016) Cespedes Wanted to Stay. Mets Wanted Him to Stay. Done Deal. New York Times B9

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Koenig 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Koenig 2000; Ley and Hamilton 2008).

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

  • Two authors: (Ley and Hamilton 2008)
  • Three or more authors: (Takahashi et al. 2009)

About the journal

Full journal titleBulletin of Mathematical Biology
AbbreviationBull. Math. Biol.
ISSN (print)0092-8240
ISSN (online)1522-9602
ScopeGeneral Agricultural and Biological Sciences
General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
Computational Theory and Mathematics
General Environmental Science
Immunology
General Mathematics
General Neuroscience
Pharmacology

Other styles