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

Barbier, Edward B. 2014. “Economics: Account for Depreciation of Natural Capital.” Nature 515 (7525): 32–33.

A journal article with 2 authors

Dye, Christopher, and Brian G. Williams. 2010. “The Population Dynamics and Control of Tuberculosis.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 328 (5980): 856–861.

A journal article with 3 authors

Mitrovica, Jerry X., Natalya Gomez, and Peter U. Clark. 2009. “The Sea-Level Fingerprint of West Antarctic Collapse.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 323 (5915): 753.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Dixon, M. J., D. Smilek, C. Cudahy, and P. M. Merikle. 2000. “Five plus Two Equals Yellow.” Nature 406 (6794): 365.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Dunnivant, Frank M. 2004. Environmental Laboratory Exercises for Instrumental Analysis and Environmental Chemistry. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Huang, De-Shuang, Martin McGinnity, Laurent Heutte, and Xiao-Ping Zhang, eds. 2010. Advanced Intelligent Computing Theories and Applications: 6th International Conference on Intelligent Computing, ICIC 2010, Changsha, China, August 18-21, 2010. Proceedings. Vol. 93. Communications in Computer and Information Science. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Ewing, E. Thomas. 2013. “‘A Most Powerful Instrument for a Despot’: The Telegraph as a Trans-National Instrument of Imperial Control and Political Mobilization in the Middle East.” In The Nation State and Beyond: Governing Globalization Processes in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries, edited by Isabella Löhr and Roland Wenzlhuemer, 83–100. Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context. 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

Hale, Tom. 2015. “Drones Capture Stunning Images Of Orca Pod.” IFLScience. IFLScience.

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. 1973. Improvements Needed in NASA’s Estimating and Reporting of Program Costs. 093832. 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

Novak, Timothy S. 2017. “Vital Signs of U.S. Osteopathic Medical Residency Programs Pivoting to Single Accreditation Standards.” Doctoral dissertation, Tampa, FL: University of South Florida.

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

Pilon, Mary. 2013. “Olympic Leaders Mend U.S. Ties With the I.O.C.” New York Times, June 1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Barbier 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Barbier 2014; Dye and Williams 2010).

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

Two authors: (Dye and Williams 2010)
Three authors: (Mitrovica, Gomez, and Clark 2009)
4 or more authors: (Dixon et al. 2000)

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

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