How to format your references using the Journal of Vertebrate Biology citation style

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

Pain E. 2008: Science careers. Sustaining forests in a changing world. Science 320: 1514–1517.

A journal article with 2 authors

Moreira D. & López-García P. 2005: Comment on “The 1.2-megabase genome sequence of Mimivirus.” Science 308: 1114; author reply 1114.

A journal article with 3 authors

Campbell J.E. Lobell D.B. & Field C.B. 2009: Greater transportation energy and GHG offsets from bioelectricity than ethanol. Science 324: 1055–1057.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Wei C. Pang H. Zhang B. Lu Q. Liang S. & Gao F. 2013: Two-dimensional β-MnO₂ nanowire network with enhanced electrochemical capacitance. Sci. Rep. 3: 2193.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ruiz J.-L. 2017: Supra-Gingival Minimally Invasive Dentistry. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Gordon R. & Seckbach J., eds. 2012: The Science of Algal Fuels: Phycology, Geology, Biophotonics, Genomics and Nanotechnology. Springer Netherlands. Dordrecht. XXXIV, 506 p pp.

A chapter in an edited book

Boccara C. & Carminati R. 2007: Near-Field Optics: From Experiment to Theory. In:Nanoscience: Nanotechnologies and Nanophysics. Dupas C. Houdy P. & Lahmani M. eds., pp. 121–156. Springer. Berlin, Heidelberg.

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 Vertebrate Biology.

Blog post

Andrew E. 2015: July Was The Hottest Month Since Records Began. 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. 1990: Energy R&D: DOE’s Allocation of Funds for Basic and Applied Research and Development. U.S. Government Printing Office. Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Pundir B. 2011: Surface pressure fluctuations due to an impinging underexpanded supersonic jet. Doctoral dissertation. Florida Atlantic University. Boca Raton, FL.

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

Dunlap D.W. & Beachy S.C. 2016: Seeking the Final Faces to Fill a Sept. 11 Tapestry. New York Times: A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Pain 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Moreira & López-García 2005. Pain 2008).

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

Two authors: (Moreira & López-García 2005)
Three or more authors: (Wei et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Vertebrate Biology
ISSN (online)	2694-7684
Scope