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
Lawler, A. (2000). ASIAN-AMERICAN SCIENTISTS: Silent No Longer: “Model Minority” Mobilizes. Science (New York, N.Y.), 290(5494), 1072–1077.
A journal article with 2 authors
Adkins, J. F., & Pasquero, C. (2004). Ocean science. Deep ocean overturning--then and now. Science (New York, N.Y.), 306(5699), 1143–1144.
A journal article with 3 authors
Marshall, C. B., Fletcher, G. L., & Davies, P. L. (2004). Hyperactive antifreeze protein in a fish. Nature, 429(6988), 153.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Egholm, D. L., Nielsen, S. B., Pedersen, V. K., & Lesemann, J.-E. (2009). Glacial effects limiting mountain height. Nature, 460(7257), 884–887.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Jayaweera, S. K. (2014). Signal Processing for Cognitive Radios. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Brock, S. E. (2006). Identifying, Assessing, and Treating Autism at School. (S. R. Jimerson & R. L. Hansen, Eds.). Boston, MA: Springer US.
A chapter in an edited book
Knopov, P. S., & Deriyeva, O. N. (2013). Stochastic Processes in a Hilbert Space. In O. N. Deriyeva (Ed.), Estimation and Control Problems for Stochastic Partial Differential Equations (pp. 155–175). New York, NY: Springer.

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
Luntz, S. (2017, May 22). Mouse Sperm Still Works After Months In Space. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/mouse-sperm-still-works-after-months-in-space/. 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. (1991). FAA Budget: Key Issues in Facilities and Equipment and Operations Accounts Need Resolution (No. T-RCED-91-58). 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
Naqvi, S. Z. (2017). Around the world in 15 bites: Applied perspectives on learning about food (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
Novick, S. M. (2015, December 13). Elevating the Humble Wing at Sports Bars. New York Times, p. LI11.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Lawler 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Adkins and Pasquero 2004; Lawler 2000).

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

  • Two authors: (Adkins and Pasquero 2004)
  • Three or more authors: (Egholm et al. 2009)

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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