How to format your references using the Current Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Current 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:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
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

Vargas-Parada, L. (2012). Pathology: Three questions. Nature 488, S14-5.

A journal article with 2 authors

Poliakoff, M., and Anastas, P. (2001). A principled stance. Nature 413, 257.

A journal article with 3 authors

Storch, N.I., Anderson, K.R., and Lai, D. (2014). Chaotic dynamics of stellar spin in binaries and the production of misaligned hot Jupiters. Science 345, 1317–1321.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Merkel, S., Kubo, A., Miyagi, L., Speziale, S., Duffy, T.S., Mao, H.-K., and Wenk, H.-R. (2006). Plastic deformation of MgGeO3 post-perovskite at lower mantle pressures. Science 311, 644–646.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Desmond, K.K. (2011). Ideas about Art (Wiley-Blackwell).

An edited book

Andres, E., Damiand, G., and Lienhardt, P. eds. (2005). Discrete Geometry for Computer Imagery: 12th International Conference, DGCI 2005, Poitiers, France, April 13-15, 2005. Proceedings (Springer).

A chapter in an edited book

Hayashi, T., Kojima, A., Miyazaki, T., Oda, N., Wakita, K., and Furusawa, T. (2014). Application of FPGA to Nuclear Power Plant I&C Systems. In Progress of Nuclear Safety for Symbiosis and Sustainability: Advanced Digital Instrumentation, Control and Information Systems for Nuclear Power Plants, H. Yoshikawa and Z. Zhang, eds. (Springer Japan), pp. 41–47.

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 Current Biology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015). The Eye Is Our Window To The Brain – And There’s A Lot We Can Tell From It. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/eye-our-window-brain-and-there-s-lot-we-can-tell-it/.

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 (2015). International Space Station: Measurable Performance Targets and Documentation Needed to Better Assess Management of National Laboratory (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

Poudel, S.R. (2017). Models and Algorithms to Solve a Reliable and Congested Biomass Supply Chain Network Designing Problem under Uncertainty.

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

Kelly, K. (2017). Trump Adviser’s $285 Million Exit Pay Questioned as to Possible Goldman Influence. New York Times, A19.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in superscript:

This sentence cites one reference ².
This sentence cites two references ^2,4.
This sentence cites four references ^2,4,6,8.

About the journal

Full journal title	Current Biology
Abbreviation	Curr. Biol.
ISSN (print)	0960-9822
ISSN (online)	1879-0445
Scope	General Agricultural and Biological Sciences General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology