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

Nadis S. 2000. Industry considers carbon catching. Nature. 406:224.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gibbs RA, Nelson DL. 2003. Human genetics. Primate shadow play. Science. 299:1331–1333.

A journal article with 3 authors

Dwyer G, Dushoff J, Yee SH. 2004. The combined effects of pathogens and predators on insect outbreaks. Nature. 430:341–345.

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Lai Y-K et al. 2013. Bioinspired TiO₂ nanostructure films with special wettability and adhesion for droplets manipulation and patterning. Sci. Rep. 3:3009.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Abracen J, Looman J. 2015. Treatment of High-Risk Sexual Offenders. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Klein F. 2008. The Theory of the Top. Volume 1: Introduction to the Kinematics and Kinetics of the Top. Birkhäuser: Boston, MA.

A chapter in an edited book

Botero M. 2014. How Primate Mothers and Infants Communicate: Characterizing Interaction in Mother–Infant Studies. In: The Evolution of Social Communication in Primates: A Multidisciplinary Approach. Pina, M & Gontier, N, editors. Interdisciplinary Evolution Research Springer International Publishing: Cham pp. 83–99.

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

Taub B. 2016. Ancient Primate Brains Help Fill In The Gaps In Evolution Of Human Intelligence. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/ancient-primate-brains-help-fill-gaps-evolution-human-intelligence/ (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. 1976. Assistance Provided for the Construction of Higher Education Academic Facilities. 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

Schroder GL. 2015. A quantitative study of critical thinking skills in bachelors of science nursing program students. Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix: Phoenix, AZ.

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

Dominus S. 2014. About That Night. New York Times, December 11.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Nadis 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Nadis 2000; Gibbs & Nelson 2003).

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

Two authors: (Gibbs & Nelson 2003)
Three or more authors: (Lai et al. 2013)

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

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