How to format your references using the Hypotheses in the Life Sciences citation style

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

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

[1]

Combes SA. Neuroscience: Dragonflies predict and plan their hunts. Nature, (2015) 517(7534), 279–280.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Duan H, Sun C. Swarm intelligence inspired shills and the evolution of cooperation. Scientific reports, (2014) 4, 5210.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Williams MA, Tyznik AJ, Bevan MJ. Interleukin-2 signals during priming are required for secondary expansion of CD8+ memory T cells. Nature, (2006) 441(7095), 890–893.

A journal article with 10 or more authors

[1]

Finne AP, Araki T, Blaauwgeers R, Eltsov VB, Kopnin NB, Krusius M, Skrbek L, Tsubota M, Volovik GE. An intrinsic velocity-independent criterion for superfluid turbulence. Nature, (2003) 424(6952), 1022–1025.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Hammes GG. Spectroscopy for the Biological Sciences. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2005.

An edited book

[1]

Rauch S, Morrison GM, Monzón A, editors. Highway and Urban Environment: Proceedings of the 9th Highway and Urban Environment symposium. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2010.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Barta A, Kalyna M, Lorković ZJ. Plant SR Proteins and Their Functions. In: Reddy ASN, Golovkin M, editors. Nuclear pre-mRNA Processing in Plants. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2008. p. 83–102.

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 Hypotheses in the Life Sciences.

Blog post

[1]

Andrew E. Space Mining Is Closer Than You Think, And The Prospects Are Great [Internet]. IFLScience(2015) [cited 2018 Oct 30] Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/space/space-mining-closer-you-think-and-prospects-are-great/

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

[1]

Government Accountability Office. Federal Communications Commission’s Effort To Implement the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1975.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Breckheimer I. Mapping habitat quality in conservation’s neglected geography. (2012)

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

[1]

Hirshman L. Where Are the New Jobs for Women? New York Times(2008) , A35.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	Hypotheses in the Life Sciences
ISSN (print)	2042-8960
Scope