How to format your references using the Genome Biology and Evolution citation style

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

Petherick A. 2010. Development: Mother’s milk: A rich opportunity. Nature. 468:S5-7.

A journal article with 2 authors

Akbalik G, Schuman EM. 2014. Molecular biology. mRNA, live and unmasked. Science. 343:375–376.

A journal article with 3 authors

Emile O, Le Floch A, Vollrath F. 2006. Biopolymers: shape memory in spider draglines. Nature. 440:621.

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Evans MJ et al. 2007. Claudin-1 is a hepatitis C virus co-receptor required for a late step in entry. Nature. 446:801–805.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Nappi E, Peskov V. 2013. Imaging Gaseous Detectors and Their Applications. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA: Weinheim, Germany.

An edited book

Mak G. 2010. Spring Recipes. Second Edition. Apress: Berkeley, CA.

A chapter in an edited book

Fugini MG, Maggiolini P, Valles RS. 2014. Employment Services in Catalonia. In: e-Government and Employment Services: A Case Study in Effectiveness. Maggiolini, P & Valles, RS, editors. SpringerBriefs in Applied Sciences and Technology Springer International Publishing: Cham pp. 37–56.

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 Genome Biology and Evolution.

Blog post

Andrews R. 2016. Ancient Super-Eruptions Blasted Volcanic Debris All The Way Across Australia. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/ancient-supereruptions-blasted-volcanic-debris-all-the-way-across-australia/ (Accessed October 30, 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. GSA’s Effort to Develop Year 2000 Business Continuity and Contingency Plans for Telecommunications Systems. 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

Moshfegh N. 2014. The multidimensional wellbeing assessment: Preliminary validation in an Iranian sample. Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University: Malibu, CA.

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

Bilefsky D, Chan S. 2017. Dispute Over British Baby’s Fate Draws In President and Pope. New York Times, July 3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Petherick 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Petherick 2010; Akbalik & Schuman 2014).

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

Two authors: (Akbalik & Schuman 2014)
Three or more authors: (Evans et al. 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	Genome Biology and Evolution
Abbreviation	Genome Biol. Evol.
ISSN (online)	1759-6653
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Genetics