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

Foley JA (2005) AtmospheRIC science. Tipping points in the tundra. Science 310:627–628

A journal article with 2 authors

Blander JM, Amsen D (2009) Immunology. Amino acid addiction. Science 324:1282–1283

A journal article with 3 authors

Ledderose J, Dieter S, Schwarz MK (2013) Maturation of postnatally generated olfactory bulb granule cells depends on functional γ-protocadherin expression. Sci Rep 3:1514

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Dufour P, Liebert J, Fontaine G, Behara N (2007) White dwarf stars with carbon atmospheres. Nature 450:522–524

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Greenspan D (2008) Numerical Solution of Ordinary Differential Equations. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH, Weinheim, Germany

An edited book

Zhang X, Sun M, Wang Z, Huang X (eds) (2015) Social Media Processing: 4th National Conference, SMP 2015, Guangzhou, China, November 16-17, 2015, Proceedings. Springer, Singapore

A chapter in an edited book

Czinglar C, Katicic A, Kčhler K, Schaner-Wolles C (2006) Strategies in the L1-acquisition of predication: The copula construction in German and Croatian. In: Gagarina N, Gulzow I (eds) The Acquisition of Verbs and their Grammar: The Effect of Particular Languages. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp 71–104

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

Andrews R (2016) Military Officials Say Climate Change Presents “Significant And Direct Risks To US Homeland.” In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/military-officials-climate-change-significant-direct-risks-us-homeland/. 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 (1974) Awarding and Implementing an Emergency School Aid Act Grant to the North End Concerned Citizens Community Council, Detroit, Michigan. 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

Nersisyan HA (2017) Armenian American Student Perceptions of Campus Climate: Examining the Conditions That Support or Inhibit Their College Experience. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

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 (2010) Thanks for the Tasteless Sermon. New York Times B13

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Foley 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Foley 2005; Blander and Amsen 2009).

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

Two authors: (Blander and Amsen 2009)
Three or more authors: (Dufour et al. 2007)

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

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