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

Versteeg R. 2014 Cancer: Tumours outside the mutation box. Nature 506, 438–439.

A journal article with 2 authors

Reubi O, Blundy J. 2009 A dearth of intermediate melts at subduction zone volcanoes and the petrogenesis of arc andesites. Nature 461, 1269–1273.

A journal article with 3 authors

Cabernard C, Prehoda KE, Doe CQ. 2010 A spindle-independent cleavage furrow positioning pathway. Nature 467, 91–94.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Zheng H, Zhang X, Zhang Z, Tian Y, Chen H, Li C, Zhang Y. 2013 Parametric amplification and cascaded-nonlinearity processes in common atomic system. Sci. Rep. 3, 1885.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lyatkher VM. 2015 Seismic Loads. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Nikolaidis Y, editor. 2013 Quality Management in Reverse Logistics: A Broad Look on Quality Issues and Their Interaction with Closed-Loop Supply Chains. London: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Thedéen T. 2006 SETTING THE STAGE: THE VULNERABILITY OF CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURES. In Protection of Civilian Infrastructure from Acts of Terrorism (eds KV Frolov, GB Baecher), pp. 33–40. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

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

Taub B. 2016 Cannabinoids May Cause Memory Loss By Depriving Brain Cells Of Energy, According To Study. IFLScience. See https://www.iflscience.com/brain/cannabinoids-may-cause-memory-loss-depriving-brain-cells-energy/ (accessed on 30 October 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. 1991 High-Performance Computing: Industry Uses of Supercomputers and High-Speed Networks.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Lin Y-S. 2009 Virtuoso piano transcriptions of Stephen Hough and Marc-André Hamelin: Lisztian tradition in the twenty-first century. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Pilon M. 2013 Fighter Who Faked Death Is Sent to Prison for Robbery. New York Times, 26 November. , B14.

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