How to format your references using the Open Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Open 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

Kinlen L. 2005 Obituary: Richard Doll (1912-2005). Nature 438, 41.

A journal article with 2 authors

Wang L, Sigworth FJ. 2009 Structure of the BK potassium channel in a lipid membrane from electron cryomicroscopy. Nature 461, 292–295.

A journal article with 3 authors

Yi-Xiang Y, Ye J, Liu W-M. 2013 Goldstone and Higgs modes of photons inside a cavity. Sci. Rep. 3, 3476.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Lou Y, Liu Y, Shi C, Yao X, Zheng F. 2014 Precise orbit determination of BeiDou constellation based on BETS and MGEX network. Sci. Rep. 4, 4692.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lindl T, Steubing R. 2013 Atlas of Living Cell Cultures. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Teo T, editor. 2013 Handbook of Quantitative Methods for Educational Research. Rotterdam: SensePublishers.

A chapter in an edited book

Houbraken J, Samson RA. 2006 Standardization of methods for detecting heat resistant fungi. In Advances in Food Mycology (eds AD Hocking, JI Pitt, RA Samson, U Thrane), pp. 107–111. Boston, MA: Springer US.

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 Open Biology.

Blog post

Andrew E. 2014 Buzz Aldrin Describes His Encounter With A ‘UFO’. IFLScience.

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. 2000 At-Risk Youth: School-Community Collaborations Focus on Improving Student Outcomes.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Crider MC. 2012 The social and environmental effects of shrimp mariculture: Case studies of two coastal villages in Ecuador. Doctoral dissertation, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL.

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

David Goodman J, Baker AL. 2015 Police in Midtown Wound Suspect in Hammer Attacks. New York Times, 14 May. , A20.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	Open Biology
Abbreviation	Open Biol.
ISSN (online)	2046-2441
Scope