How to format your references using the Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres. 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

Lane J (2010) Let’s make science metrics more scientific. Nature 464:488–489

A journal article with 2 authors

Zimmerman AW, Connors SL (2014) Neuroscience. Could autism be treated prenatally? Science 343:620–621

A journal article with 3 authors

Donlea JM, Ramanan N, Shaw PJ (2009) Use-dependent plasticity in clock neurons regulates sleep need in Drosophila. Science 324:105–108

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Leroy EM, Kumulungui B, Pourrut X, et al (2005) Fruit bats as reservoirs of Ebola virus. Nature 438:575–576

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Chowdhury S (2016) Optimization and Business Improvement Studies in Upstream Oil and Gas Industry. John Wiley &;#38; Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Gilbert JK (ed) (2005) Visualization in Science Education. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht

A chapter in an edited book

Villa P, Duan H, Loiselle SA (2015) Using Remote Sensing to Assess the Impact of Human Activities on Water Quality: Case Study of Lake Taihu, China. In: Younos T, Parece TE (eds) Advances in Watershed Science and Assessment. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 85–110

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 Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres.

Blog post

Taub B (2016) Sign Language Produces Color Visions In People With Synaesthesia. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/sign-language-produces-color-visions-in-people-with-synaesthesia/. 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 (1993) Department of Education: Long-Standing Management Problems Hamper Reforms. 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

Brooks CE (2010) Action research: Interventions for helping leaders use groups to affect conflict between workforce generations. Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix

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

Cotter H (2017) A Pooh-Bah Who Painted With Words. New York Times C13

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Lane 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Lane 2010; Zimmerman and Connors 2014).

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

Two authors: (Zimmerman and Connors 2014)
Three or more authors: (Leroy et al. 2005)

About the journal

Full journal title	Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres
Abbreviation	Orig. Life Evol. Biosph.
ISSN (print)	0169-6149
ISSN (online)	1573-0875
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Space and Planetary Science General Medicine