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

Barnes, D. K. 2001. “Resource Availability: Ancient Homes for Hard-up Hermit Crabs.” Nature 412 (6849): 785–786.

A journal article with 2 authors

Cheung, A. Y., and M. Wu H. 2001. “Plant Biology. Pollen Tube Guidance--Right on Target.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 293 (5534): 1441–1442.

A journal article with 3 authors

Simmons, Sheri L., Dennis A. Bazylinski, and Katrina J. Edwards. 2006. “South-Seeking Magnetotactic Bacteria in the Northern Hemisphere.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 311 (5759): 371–374.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Schirawski, Jan, Gertrud Mannhaupt, Karin Münch, Thomas Brefort, Kerstin Schipper, Gunther Doehlemann, Maurizio Di Stasio, et al. 2010. “Pathogenicity Determinants in Smut Fungi Revealed by Genome Comparison.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 330 (6010): 1546–1548.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Strohfeldt, Katja A. 2015. Essentials of Inorganic Chemistry. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Hillebrands, Burkard, and André Thiaville, eds. 2006. Spin Dynamics in Confined Magnetic Structures III. Vol. 101. Topics in Applied Physics. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Anderson, Jeffrey, Celia Schiffer, Sook-Kyung Lee, and Ronald Swanstrom. 2009. “Viral Protease Inhibitors.” In Antiviral Strategies, edited by Hans-Georg Kräusslich and Ralf Bartenschlager, 85–110. Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology. Berlin, Heidelberg: 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 Journal of Biological Education.

Blog post

Andrew, Elise. 2014. “Paraplegic In ‘Ironman Suit’ Will Take The First Kick In The 2014 World Cup.” IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/paraplegic-ironman-suit-will-take-first-kick-2014-world-cup/.

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. 2013. Information Technology: OMB and Agencies Need to More Effectively Implement Major Initiatives to Save Billions of Dollars. GAO-13-796T. 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

Hofmann, Thomas Brent. 2008. “Adductor and Abductor Spasmodic Dysphonia: A Comparison of Quality of Life Issues for Those Receiving Botox Treatment.” Doctoral dissertation, Scottsdale, AZ: Northcentral 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

Poniewozik, James. 2017. “Trump’s Name Looms in Mind and Speeches.” New York Times, February 27.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Barnes 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Barnes 2001; Cheung and Wu H 2001).

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

Two authors: (Cheung and Wu H 2001)
Three authors: (Simmons, Bazylinski, and Edwards 2006)
4 or more authors: (Schirawski et al. 2010)

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