How to format your references using the Marine Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Marine Biology. 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	Download the output style file
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

Binns WR (2011) Astronomy. Cosmic-ray origins. Science 334:1071–1072.

A journal article with 2 authors

Birren SJ, Marder E (2013) Neuroscience. Plasticity in the neurotransmitter repertoire. Science 340:436–437.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sánchez I, Mahlke C, Yuan J (2003) Pivotal role of oligomerization in expanded polyglutamine neurodegenerative disorders. Nature 421:373–379.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Gallup AC, Chong A, Kacelnik A, Krebs JR, Couzin ID (2014) The influence of emotional facial expressions on gaze-following in grouped and solitary pedestrians. Sci Rep 4:5794.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Pohl J (2011) Building Science. Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Oxford, UK

An edited book

Gülpınar N, Harrison P, Rüstem B (eds) (2011) Performance Models and Risk Management in Communications Systems. Springer, New York, NY

A chapter in an edited book

Iwarsson S (2009) Housing Adaptations: Current Practices FutureChallenges. In: Söderback I (ed) International Handbook of Occupational Therapy Interventions. Springer, New York, NY, pp 63–69

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 Biology.

Blog post

Luntz S (2016) Bikini Island Is Still Very Radioactive Five Decades After Atomic Bomb Tests. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/bikini-island-is-still-very-radioactive-five-decades-after-atomic-bomb-tests/. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (2005) Passenger Rail Security: Enhanced Federal Leadership Needed to Prioritize and Guide Security Efforts. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Cook MM (2017) An Examination of the Proportion of Special Education Students in Single-Parent Homes in Comparison to Regular Education Students in Similar Households. Doctoral dissertation, Lindenwood 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

Brantley B (2016) Insanity Most Genteel. New York Times C1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Binns 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Binns 2011; Birren and Marder 2013).

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

Two authors: (Birren and Marder 2013)
Three or more authors: (Gallup et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Marine Biology
Abbreviation	Mar. Biol.
ISSN (print)	0025-3162
ISSN (online)	1432-1793
Scope	Aquatic Science Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Ecology