How to format your references using the Life citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Life. 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

Petsko, G. Save University Arts from the Bean Counters. Nature 2010, 468, 1003.

A journal article with 2 authors

Elbert, T.; Heim, S. A Light and a Dark Side. Nature 2001, 411, 139.

A journal article with 3 authors

Bai, J.; Virovets, A.V.; Scheer, M. Synthesis of Inorganic Fullerene-like Molecules. Science 2003, 300, 781–783.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Russell, C.T.; Zhang, T.L.; Delva, M.; Magnes, W.; Strangeway, R.J.; Wei, H.Y. Lightning on Venus Inferred from Whistler-Mode Waves in the Ionosphere. Nature 2007, 450, 661–662.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Meyer, M.D. Transportation Planning Handbook; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ, 2016; ISBN 9781118762356.

An edited book

Advances in Wind Energy Conversion Technology; Sathyajith, M., Philip, G.S., Eds.; Environmental Science and Engineering; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2011; ISBN 9783540882572.

A chapter in an edited book

Grilo, C.; Correia, L. Instability in Spatial Evolutionary Games. In Progress in Artificial Intelligence: 14th Portuguese Conference on Artificial Intelligence, EPIA 2009, Aveiro, Portugal, October 12-15, 2009. Proceedings; Lopes, L.S., Lau, N., Mariano, P., Rocha, L.M., Eds.; Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2009; pp. 41–52 ISBN 9783642046858.

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 Life.

Blog post

O`Callaghan, J. Hyperloop Company Reveals Magnetic Levitation Tech That Will Reach Speeds Of 760mph (accessed on 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 Aviation Security: Additional Actions Needed to Meet Domestic and International Challenges; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1994;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Dunn, D.N. Non-Athlete Students’ Attitudes toward Student-Athletes: A Social Identity Approach. Doctoral dissertation, University of Louisiana: Lafayette, LA, 2015.

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

Victor, D. Dismissed Breitbart Editor Blames Anti-Muslim Tweets. New York Times 2017, B3.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	Life
Abbreviation	Life (Basel)
ISSN (online)	2075-1729
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology Palaeontology Space and Planetary Science