How to format your references using the Life Science Alliance citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Life Science Alliance (LSA). 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Spottiswoode CN (2013) Evolution. How cooperation defeats cheats. Science 342: 1452–1453.

A journal article with 2 authors

Zens MS, Webb CO (2002) Ecology. Sizing up the shape of life. Science 295: 1475–1476.

A journal article with 3 authors

Wolfe JM, Horowitz TS, Kenner NM (2005) Cognitive psychology: rare items often missed in visual searches. Nature 435: 439–440.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Akiyama T, Maeda S, Yamane S, Ogino K, Kasai M, Kajiura F, Matsumoto M, Inoue J-I (2005) Dependence of self-tolerance on TRAF6-directed development of thymic stroma. Science 308: 248–251.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Joseph C (2013) Advanced Credit Risk Analysis and Management (Oxford, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd).

An edited book

McCullough DR, Takatsuki S, Kaji K (2009) Sika Deer: Biology and Management of Native and Introduced Populations (Tokyo: Springer Japan).

A chapter in an edited book

Duggan D, Wu Y (2014) Security Correctness for Secure Nested Transactions. In Trustworthy Global Computing: 8th International Symposium, TGC 2013, Buenos Aires, Argentina, August 30-31, 2013, Revised Selected Papers, M. Abadi, and A. Lluch Lafuente, eds. (Cham: Springer International Publishing), pp. 64–79.

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 Science Alliance.

Blog post

Hale T (2016) Photographs Of Cities From Space Have Shown A Worrying Trend (IFLScience) https://www.iflscience.com/environment/photographs-of-cities-from-space-have-shown-a-worrying-trend/ (accessed: 30/10/2018).

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 (1987) ADP Budget: Analysis of SSA’s Fiscal Year 1988 Information Technology Systems Request (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

Meyertholen AN (2014) Blurring the lines: The invention of abstract in German literature since 1800. Doctoral dissertation. Indiana University.

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

Takei G (2017) A Place Called Manzanar. New York Times: A23.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Spottiswoode, 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Zens & Webb, 2002; Spottiswoode, 2013).

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

Two authors: (Zens & Webb, 2002)
Three or more authors: (Akiyama et al, 2005)

About the journal

Full journal title	Life Science Alliance
ISSN (online)	2575-1077
Scope