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

Loubere, P. Marine Control of Biological Production in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific Ocean. Nature 2000, 406, 497–500.

A journal article with 2 authors

Dibner, C.; Schibler, U. METABOLISM. A Pancreatic Clock Times Insulin Release. Science 2015, 350, 628–629.

A journal article with 3 authors

Gagnon, K.; Chadwell, C.D.; Norabuena, E. Measuring the Onset of Locking in the Peru-Chile Trench with GPS and Acoustic Measurements. Nature 2005, 434, 205–208.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Cooper, A.; Lalueza-Fox, C.; Anderson, S.; Rambaut, A.; Austin, J.; Ward, R. Complete Mitochondrial Genome Sequences of Two Extinct Moas Clarify Ratite Evolution. Nature 2001, 409, 704–707.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Vilensky, J.A.; Robertson, W.M.; Suárez-Quian, C.A. The Clinical Anatomy of the Cranial Nerves; John Wiley & Sons, Inc: Hoboken, NJ, 2015; ISBN 9781118491959.

An edited book

National Forest Inventories: Contributions to Forest Biodiversity Assessments; Chirici, G., Winter, S., McRoberts, R.E., Eds.; Managing Forest Ecosystems; Springer Netherlands: Dordrecht, 2011; Vol. 20; ISBN 9789400704817.

A chapter in an edited book

Kim-Prieto, C.; Diener, E.; Tamir, M.; Scollon, C.; Diener, M. Integrating the Diverse Definitions of Happiness: A Time-Sequential Framework of Subjective Well-Being. In The Exploration of Happiness: Present and Future Perspectives; Delle Fave, A., Ed.; Happiness Studies Book Series; Springer Netherlands: Dordrecht, 2013; pp. 47–75 ISBN 9789400757011.

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

Hamilton, K. Lucky Photographer Captures Epic Battle Between Sea Snake And Stonefish (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 Ocean Research Fleet: Contracting Practices for Repair of NOAA Ships; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 1988;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Nuñez, E.M. Getting H.I.P. with First-Generation College Students: Decolonizing the High Impact Practice Movement. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach: Long Beach, CA, 2017.

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

Soloski, A. The Ethics of Telling Someone Else’s Story. New York Times 2015, C3.

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