How to format your references using the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. 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

Neutze R. 2015 STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY. Snapshots of a protein quake. Science 350, 381.

A journal article with 2 authors

McPherson MS, Schapiro MO. 2003 Education. Funding roller coaster for public higher education. Science 302, 1157.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sun S, Ting C-T, Wu C-I. 2004 The normal function of a speciation gene, Odysseus, and its hybrid sterility effect. Science 305, 81–83.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Clubb R, Rowcliffe M, Lee P, Mar KU, Moss C, Mason GJ. 2008 Compromised survivorship in zoo elephants. Science 322, 1649.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Cox DA. 2004 Galois Theory. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Lorrain P. 2006 Magneto-Fluid Dynamics: Fundamentals and Case Studies of Natural Phenomena. New York, NY: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Baer PC, Luttmann W. 2014 Adipose-derived Stromal/Stem Cells and Their Differentiation Potential into the Endothelial Lineage. In Adult and Pluripotent Stem Cells: Potential for Regenerative Medicine of the Cardiovascular System (eds J Hescheler, E Hofer), pp. 53–70. 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 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

Blog post

Andrew E. 2015 How Cancer Abducts Your Immune Cells – and What We Can Do About It. IFLScience. See https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/how-cancer-abducts-your-immune-cells-and-what-we-can-do-about-it/ (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. 1994 Weather Forecasting: Improvements Needed in Laboratory Software Development Processes.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Puebla RA. 2014 The avant-garde tuba: Analysis and comparisons of interpretations of William Kraft’s Encounters II for unaccompanied tuba. 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

Pogrebin R, Cooper M. 2017 Geffen Calls Lack of Aid For a Hall ‘Shameful’. New York Times, 4 October. , C1.

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	Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B
Abbreviation	Philos. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B Biol. Sci.
ISSN (print)	0962-8436
ISSN (online)	1471-2970
Scope	General Agricultural and Biological Sciences General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology