How to format your references using the International Journal of Biological Sciences citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for International Journal of Biological 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

Willner I. Tech.Sight. Bioelectronics. Biomaterials for sensors, fuel cells, and circuitry. Science. 2002 Dec 20;298(5602):2407–8.

A journal article with 2 authors

Jansen VAA, Stumpf MPH. Ecology. Making sense of evolution in an uncertain world. Science. 2005 Sep 23;309(5743):2005–7.

A journal article with 3 authors

Stairs IH, Lyne AG, Shemar SL. Evidence for free precession in a pulsar. Nature. 2000 Aug 3;406(6795):484–6.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Dutton Z, Budde M, Slowe C, Hau LV. Observation of quantum shock waves created with ultra- compressed slow light pulses in a Bose-Einstein condensate. Science. 2001 Jul 27;293(5530):663–8.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

You H, Jianjuan X, Xin G. Radar Data Processing with Applications. Singapore: John Wiley &;#38; Sons Singapore Pte. Ltd; 2016.

An edited book

Maciaszek LA, Zhang K, editors. Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering: 6th International Conference, ENASE 2011, Beijing, China, June 8-11, 2011. Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2013. X, 219 p. 102 illus. (Communications in Computer and Information Science; vol. 275).

A chapter in an edited book

Abe S. Incremental Feature Selection by Block Addition and Block Deletion Using Least Squares SVRs. In: Gayar NE, Schwenker F, Suen C, editors. Artificial Neural Networks in Pattern Recognition: 6th IAPR TC 3 International Workshop, ANNPR 2014, Montreal, QC, Canada, October 6-8, 2014 Proceedings. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2014. p. 35–46. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science).

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 International Journal of Biological Sciences.

Blog post

Andrew E. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Rocket Tech Levitates Cells To Diagnose Disease. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/rocket-tech-levitates-cells-diagnose-disease/

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. Improvements Needed in General Automated Data Processing Controls at the National Finance Center. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1985 Jul. Report No.: AFMD-85-38.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Baggio BG. Integrating social software into blended -learning courses: A Delphi study of instructional -design processes [Doctoral dissertation]. [Minneapolis, MN]: Capella University; 2008.

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

McKINLEY JC Jr, Baker AL. Trial to Open in Case That Highlights Complaints About Justice System. New York Times. 2017 Sep 5;A21.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in parentheses:

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	International Journal of Biological Sciences
Abbreviation	Int. J. Biol. Sci.
ISSN (online)	1449-2288
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Cell Biology Developmental Biology Molecular Biology Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology