How to format your references using the CBE - Life Sciences Education citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for CBE - Life Sciences Education (LSE). 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

Grayson, M. (2012). Physics masterclass. Nature, 490(7419), S1.

A journal article with 2 authors

Zhu, M., & Ahlberg, P. E. (2004). The origin of the internal nostril of tetrapods. Nature, 432(7013), 94–97.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kikushima, K., Kita, S., & Higuchi, H. (2013). A non-invasive imaging for the in vivo tracking of high-speed vesicle transport in mouse neutrophils. Scientific Reports, 3, 1913.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Polyak, L., Edwards, M. H., Coakley, B. J., & Jakobsson, M. (2001). Ice shelves in the Pleistocene Arctic Ocean inferred from glaciogenic deep-sea bedforms. Nature, 410(6827), 453–457.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kerzner, H. (2017). Project Management Case Studies. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Zheng, X. (2013). Stock Market Modeling and Forecasting: A System Adaptation Approach (B. M. Chen, Ed.). London: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Koegel, L. K., Ashbaugh, K., & Koegel, R. L. (2016). Pivotal Response Treatment. In R. Lang, T. B. Hancock, & N. N. Singh (Eds.), Early Intervention for Young Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (pp. 85–112). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

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 CBE - Life Sciences Education.

Blog post

Andrew, D. (2017, March 15). Phosphorus Is Vital For Life On Earth – And We’re Running Low. Retrieved October 30, 2018, from IFLScience website: https://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/phosphorus-is-vital-for-life-on-earth-and-were-running-low/

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. (2003). Transportation-Disadvantaged Populations: Some Coordination Efforts Among Programs Providing Transportation Services, but Obstacles Persist (No. GAO-03-697). 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

Annan, F. (2012). Spatial pattern of yield distributions: implications for crop insurance (Doctoral dissertation). Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS.

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

Dynarski, S. (2016, July 9). America Can Fix Its Student Loan Crisis. Ask Australia. New York Times, p. BU6.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Grayson, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Grayson, 2012; Zhu & Ahlberg, 2004).

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

Two authors: (Zhu & Ahlberg, 2004)
Three authors: (Kikushima, Kita, & Higuchi, 2013)
6 or more authors: (Polyak, Edwards, Coakley, & Jakobsson, 2001)

About the journal

Full journal title	CBE - Life Sciences Education
Abbreviation	CBE Life Sci. Educ.
ISSN (online)	1931-7913
Scope	General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology Education