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

Lang KR. Astronomy. Serendipitous astronomy. Science. 2010 Jan 1;327(5961):39–40.

A journal article with 2 authors

Sonenberg N, Pause A. Signal transduction. Protein synthesis and oncogenesis meet again. Science. 2006 Oct 20;314(5798):428–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kirichok Y, Navarro B, Clapham DE. Whole-cell patch-clamp measurements of spermatozoa reveal an alkaline-activated Ca2+ channel. Nature. 2006 Feb 9;439(7077):737–40.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

West GB, Savage VM, Gillooly J, Enquist BJ, Woodruff WH, Brown JH. Physiology: Why does metabolic rate scale with body size? Nature. 2003 Feb 13;421(6924):713; discussion 714.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Zecchina A, Califano S. The Development of Catalysis. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2017.

An edited book

Wang Q, Dongchao M, Sørensen BÆ, editors. Revisiting Gender Inequality: Perspectives from the People’s Republic of China. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan US; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

Cueto E, González D, Alfaro I. PGD for Dynamical Problems. In: González D, Alfaro I, editors. Proper Generalized Decompositions: An Introduction to Computer Implementation with Matlab. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016. p. 65–89.

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. Use Of CRISPR In First Human Trial Given Green Light In The US [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2016 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/use-of-crispr-in-first-human-trial-given-green-light-in-the-us/

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. NASA Issues. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1992 Dec. Report No.: OCG-93-27TR.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Wilkerson MR. The Relationship Between Caring School Community Program Implementation and Elementary Student Achievement [Doctoral dissertation]. [ St. Charles, MO]: Lindenwood University; 2011.

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

Vecsey G. Foot in the Door. New York Times. 2010 Jun 30;B10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Lang 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Lang 2010; Sonenberg and Pause 2006).

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

Two authors: (Sonenberg and Pause 2006)
Three or more authors: (West et al. 2003)

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