How to format your references using the Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom (JMBA). 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Ramaswamy S (2011) Biochemistry. One atom makes all the difference. Science (New York, N.Y.) 334, 914–915.
A journal article with 2 authors
Schneider RA and Helms JA (2003) The cellular and molecular origins of beak morphology. Science (New York, N.Y.) 299, 565–568.
A journal article with 3 authors
Rajan R, Clement JP and Bhalla US (2006) Rats smell in stereo. Science (New York, N.Y.) 311, 666–670.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Makishima M, Lu TT, Xie W, Whitfield GK, Domoto H, Evans RM, Haussler MR and Mangelsdorf DJ (2002) Vitamin D receptor as an intestinal bile acid sensor. Science (New York, N.Y.) 296, 1313–1316.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Zack GM (2012) Financial Statement Fraud. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Fichera G and Magenes E (Eds.) (2011) Integrali singolari e questioni connesse, Vol. 13. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Jiang X, Schofield AJ and Wyatt JL (2010) Correlation-Based Intrinsic Image Extraction from a Single Image. In Daniilidis Kostas, Maragos Petros and Paragios Nikos (eds.) Computer Vision – ECCV 2010: 11th European Conference on Computer Vision, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, September 5-11, 2010, Proceedings, Part IV, pp. 58–71. 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 the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom.

Blog post
Luntz S (2017, January 6) Martian Crater And Blast Zone Formed In The Last Three Years. Available at https://www.iflscience.com/space/martian-crater-and-blast-zone-formed-in-the-last-three-years/ (Accessed 30 October 2018)

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 (1997) Federal Communications Commission: Broadcast Services, Television Broadcast Stations, and TV Transmission Standards No. OGC-97-18. 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
Yarijanian AA (2017) Cardborigami’s Strategic Business Plan to Address Urban Homelessness Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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
Williams J (2017, October 29) A Nazi Script Comes to Light. New York Times, p. C5.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Ramaswamy, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Schneider & Helms, 2003; Ramaswamy, 2011).

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

  • Two authors: (Schneider & Helms, 2003)
  • Three authors: (Rajan et al., 2006)
  • Four or more authors: (Makishima et al., 2002)

About the journal

Full journal titleJournal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom
AbbreviationJ. Mar. Biol. Assoc. U. K.
ISSN (print)0025-3154
ISSN (online)1469-7769
ScopeAquatic Science

Other styles