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

Pinker, Steven. 2011. “Decline of Violence: Taming the Devil within Us.” Nature 478 (7369): 309–311.

A journal article with 2 authors

Xie, Wei, and Bing Ren. 2013. “Developmental Biology. Enhancing Pluripotency and Lineage Specification.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 341 (6143): 245–247.

A journal article with 3 authors

MacLehose, Laura, Martin McKee, and Julius Weinberg. 2002. “Responding to the Challenge of Communicable Disease in Europe.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 295 (5562): 2047–2050.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Whistler, Jennifer L., Johan Enquist, Aaron Marley, Jamie Fong, Fredrik Gladher, Pamela Tsuruda, Stephen R. Murray, and Mark Von Zastrow. 2002. “Modulation of Postendocytic Sorting of G Protein-Coupled Receptors.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 297 (5581): 615–620.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ferguson, Niels, Bruce Schneier, and Tadayoshi Kohno. 2015. Cryptography Engineering. Indianapolis, Indiana: Wiley Publishing, Inc.

An edited book

Kerren, Andreas, Achim Ebert, and Jörg Meyer, eds. 2007. Human-Centered Visualization Environments: GI-Dagstuhl Research Seminar, Dagstuhl Castle, Germany, March 5-8, 2006, Revised Lectures. Vol. 4417. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Ellwart, D., and A. Czyżewski. 2010. “Camera Angle Invariant Shape Recognition in Surveillance Systems.” In Intelligent Interactive Multimedia Systems and Services, edited by George A. Tsihrintzis, Ernesto Damiani, Maria Virvou, Robert J. Howlett, and Lakhmi C. Jain, 33–40. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies. 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

Luntz, Stephen. 2015. “Why Do Europeans Have White Skin?” IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/white-skin-and-lactose-tolerance-recent-adaptations/.

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. 2004. Taxpayer Information: Data Sharing and Analysis May Enhance Tax Compliance and Improve Immigration Eligibility Decisions. GAO-04-972T. 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

Warren, Kathryn Lloyd. 2014. “Agents of Change: A New Role for Learners in Online Workplace Training.” Doctoral dissertation, Minneapolis, MN: Capella 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

Kishkovsky, Sophia. 2002. “Voice of Calm.” New York Times, November 10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Pinker 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Pinker 2011; Xie and Ren 2013).

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

Two authors: (Xie and Ren 2013)
Three authors: (MacLehose, McKee, and Weinberg 2002)
4 or more authors: (Whistler et al. 2002)

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