How to format your references using the Marine Biodiversity Records citation style

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

Christeson G. Journal club. A geophysicist ponders the mysteries of intraplate earthquakes. Nature. 2009 Jun 11;459(7248):755.

A journal article with 2 authors

Steele EJ, Blanden RV. Lamarck and antibody genes. Science. 2000 Jun 30;288(5475):2318d–9d.

A journal article with 3 authors

Dethlefsen L, McFall-Ngai M, Relman DA. An ecological and evolutionary perspective on human-microbe mutualism and disease. Nature. 2007 Oct 18;449(7164):811–8.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Michaelis J, Hettich C, Mlynek J, Sandoghdar V V. Optical microscopy using a single-molecule light source. Nature. 2000 May 18;405(6784):325–8.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Taber DF. Organic Synthesis. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2006.

An edited book

Pobil AP del, Chinellato E, Martinez-Martin E, Hallam J, Cervera E, Morales A, editors. From Animals to Animats 13: 13th International Conference on Simulation of Adaptive Behavior, SAB 2014, Castellón, Spain, July 22-25, 2014. Proceedings. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

Kuchmann-Beauger N, Aufaure M-A. Structured Data-Based Q&A System Using Surface Patterns. In: Christiansen H, Tré GD, Yazici A, Zadrozny S, Andreasen T, Larsen HL, editors. Flexible Query Answering Systems: 9th International Conference, FQAS 2011, Ghent, Belgium, October 26-28, 2011 Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2011. p. 37–48.

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 Marine Biodiversity Records.

Blog post

Davis J. Researchers find Physical Differences in Empathetic Peoples’ Brains [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/brain/researchers-find-physical-differences-empathetic-peoples-brains/

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. Key Controls NASA Employs to Guide Use and Management of Funded Space Act Agreements Are Generally Sufficient, but Some Could Be Strengthened and Clarified. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2011 Nov. Report No.: GAO-12-230R.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Seidel JG. Adolescent female stress management curriculum [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 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

Kelly D. The Pink Sheep. New York Times. 1995 Oct 15;729.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Christeson 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Christeson 2009; Steele and Blanden 2000).

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

Two authors: (Steele and Blanden 2000)
Three or more authors: (Michaelis et al. 2000)

About the journal

Full journal title	Marine Biodiversity Records
Abbreviation	Mar. Biodivers. Rec.
ISSN (online)	1755-2672
Scope	Aquatic Science Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Oceanography Ecology