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

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

Abbott, A. 2001. “WHO Plans Study of Gulf War Fallout.” Nature 413 (6852): 97.

A journal article with 2 authors

Zanetti, Maurizio, and Navin R. Mahadevan. 2012. “Cancer. Immune Surveillance from Chromosomal Chaos?” Science (New York, N.Y.) 337 (6102): 1616–1617.

A journal article with 3 authors

Aitkaliyeva, Assel, Di Chen, and Lin Shao. 2013. “Phonon Transport Assisted by Inter-Tube Carbon Displacements in Carbon Nanotube Mats.” Scientific Reports 3 (September): 2774.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Hwangbo, Dae Sung, Boris Gershman, Boris Gersham, Meng-Ping Tu, Michael Palmer, and Marc Tatar. 2004. “Drosophila DFOXO Controls Lifespan and Regulates Insulin Signalling in Brain and Fat Body.” Nature 429 (6991): 562–566.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Shaw, Montgomery T. 2011. Introduction to Polymer Rheology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Lünen, Alexander von, and Charles Travis, eds. 2013. History and GIS: Epistemologies, Considerations and Reflections. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Chiesa, Alessandro, Franco Fossati, Giovanni Gambacciani, and Emanuele Pensavalle. 2015. “Enabling Technologies for Active Space Debris Removal: The Cadet Project.” In Space Safety Is No Accident: The 7th IAASS Conference, edited by Tommaso Sgobba and Isabelle Rongier, 29–38. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

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 Journal of Biological Education.

Blog post

Carpineti, Alfredo. 2016. “Listen To The Eerie Music From The First ‘Underwater Band.’” IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/listen-eerie-music-first-underwater-band/.

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. 2012. Financial Literacy: Enhancing the Effectiveness of the Federal Government’s Role. GAO-12-636T. 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

Betts, Keturrah. 2017. “Ready, Steady, Putt! An Exhibition About the History of Miniature Golf in America.” Doctoral dissertation, Washington, DC: George Washington University.

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

Feeney, Kelly. 2009. “A Cafe That Caters.” New York Times, January 18.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Abbott 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Abbott 2001; Zanetti and Mahadevan 2012).

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

Two authors: (Zanetti and Mahadevan 2012)
Three authors: (Aitkaliyeva, Chen, and Shao 2013)
4 or more authors: (Hwangbo et al. 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Biological Education
Abbreviation	J. Biol. Educ.
ISSN (print)	0021-9266
ISSN (online)	2157-6009
Scope	General Agricultural and Biological Sciences Education