How to format your references using the History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences. 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
Tromans, A. (2001). Cell biology. Asymmetry in action. Nature, 411(6833), 33.
A journal article with 2 authors
Charbonnel, C., & Talon, S. (2005). Influence of gravity waves on the internal rotation and Li abundance of solar-type stars. Science (New York, N.Y.), 309(5744), 2189–2191.
A journal article with 3 authors
Powner, M. W., Gerland, B., & Sutherland, J. D. (2009). Synthesis of activated pyrimidine ribonucleotides in prebiotically plausible conditions. Nature, 459(7244), 239–242.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Zabow, G., Dodd, S., Moreland, J., & Koretsky, A. (2008). Micro-engineered local field control for high-sensitivity multispectral MRI. Nature, 453(7198), 1058–1063.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Staebler, P. (2017). Human Exposure to Electromagnetic Fields. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Huang, S. (2016). Electromagnetic Ultrasonic Guided Waves. (S. Wang, W. Li, & Q. Wang, Eds.) (1st ed. 2016.). Singapore: Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Cuperlovic-Culf, M., Morin, P., & Lefort, N. (2013). Analysis and Modeling of Metabolism of Cancer. In P. Lecca (Ed.), Biomechanics of Cells and Tissues: Experiments, Models and Simulations (pp. 81–102). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

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 History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences.

Blog post
Andrew, E. (2015, November 9). New Eye Drops Can Dissolve Cataracts With No Need For Surgery. IFLScience. IFLScience. Accessed 30 October 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. (1997). Transportation Infrastructure: Highway Pavement Design Guide Is Outdated (No. RCED-98-9). 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
Detoya, M. S. (2017). Canned Food Choices of College Students Using the Nuval ® Nutrient-Profiling System (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, 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
Moy, J. (2017, October 9). A Bridge That Spans Cultures. New York Times, p. A17.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Tromans 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Charbonnel and Talon 2005; Tromans 2001).

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

  • Two authors: (Charbonnel and Talon 2005)
  • Three or more authors: (Zabow et al. 2008)

About the journal

Full journal titleHistory and Philosophy of the Life Sciences
AbbreviationHist. Philos. Life Sci.
ISSN (print)0391-9714
ISSN (online)1742-6316
ScopeArts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
History
History and Philosophy of Science

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