How to format your references using the Interdisciplinary Sciences: Computational Life Sciences citation style

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

Lupas AN (2014) Protein Design. What I cannot create, I do not understand. Science 346:1455–1456

A journal article with 2 authors

Boomsma JJ, Pamilo P (2010) Retrospective. Rossiter H. Crozier (1943-2009). Science 327:45

A journal article with 3 authors

Park ST, Kim SK, Kim MS (2002) Observation of conformation-specific pathways in the photodissociation of 1-iodopropane ions. Nature 415:306–308

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Parras A, Anta H, Santos-Galindo M, et al (2018) Autism-like phenotype and risk gene mRNA deadenylation by CPEB4 mis-splicing. Nature 560:441–446

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hens H (2012) Applied Building Physics. Ernst & Sohn Verlag für Architektur und technische Wissenschaften GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin, Germany

An edited book

Kirda E, Jha S, Balzarotti D (2009) Recent Advances in Intrusion Detection: 12th International Symposium, RAID 2009, Saint-Malo, France, September 23-25, 2009. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Wang X, Zhou J, Wang ZL (2012) Nanopiezotronics and Nanogenerators. In: Zhou Z, Wang Z, Lin L (eds) Microsystems and Nanotechnology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 115–147

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 Interdisciplinary Sciences: Computational Life Sciences.

Blog post

Andrew E (2014) 10 Deadliest Diseases in Human History. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/10-deadliest-diseases-human-history/. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (2017) Indian Affairs: Actions Needed to Better Manage Indian School Construction Projects. 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

Van Fossen L (2015) The communicative use of iconic face drawings to express emotional and evaluative statements in persons with aphasia. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

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

Wagner J (2016) Giants Are Said to Set Record (For Now) for Closer. New York Times B11

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	Interdisciplinary Sciences: Computational Life Sciences
Abbreviation	Interdiscip. Sci.
ISSN (print)	1913-2751
ISSN (online)	1867-1462
Scope	General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology Computer Science Applications Health Informatics