How to format your references using the Life Sciences, Society and Policy citation style

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

Smaglik P. Job insecurity. Nature. 2002 Oct 31;419(6910):3.

A journal article with 2 authors

Cho NW, Greenberg RA. DNA repair: Familiar ends with alternative endings. Nature. 2015 Feb 12;518(7538):174–6.

A journal article with 3 authors

Liu Y, Wang J, Zhang X. Accurate determination of the vapor-liquid-solid contact line tension and the viability of Young equation. Sci. Rep. 2013;3:2008.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Aravin AA, Sachidanandam R, Girard A, Fejes-Toth K, Hannon GJ. Developmentally regulated piRNA clusters implicate MILI in transposon control. Science. 2007 May 4;316(5825):744–7.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

AIChE Equipment Testing Procedure. Tray Distillation Columns. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 1987.

An edited book

Hart-Davis G. Beginning Microsoft Office 2010. Anglin S, Pundick D, Andres C, Beckner M, Buckingham E, Cornell G, et al., editors. Berkeley, CA: Apress; 2010.

A chapter in an edited book

Nikodem M. DSA Signature Scheme Immune to the Fault Cryptanalysis. In: Grimaud G, Standaert F-X, editors. Smart Card Research and Advanced Applications: 8th IFIP WG 8.8/11.2 International Conference, CARDIS 2008, London, UK, September 8-11, 2008. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2008. p. 61–73.

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 Sciences, Society and Policy.

Blog post

Andrews R. Why Isn’t There A Real Life King Kong? IFLScience. IFLScience; 2017.

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. Federal Communications Commission: Review of the Commission’s Regulations Governing Attribution Ownership Rule. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1999 Oct. Report No.: OGC-00-1.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Do YK. Effects of informal care on caregivers’ labor market outcomes and health in South Korea [Doctoral dissertation]. [Chapel Hill, NC]: University of North Carolina; 2008.

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

Shpigel B. Season Over, the Rangers Are Left to Consider What Might Have Been. New York Times. 2017 May 10;B13.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Smaglik 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Cho and Greenberg 2015; Smaglik 2002).

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

Two authors: (Cho and Greenberg 2015)
Three or more authors: (Aravin et al. 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	Life Sciences, Society and Policy
Abbreviation	Life Sci. Soc. Policy
ISSN (online)	2195-7819
Scope