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

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

Julienne PS. 2014 Low-temperature physics: Chaos in the cold. Nature 507, 440–441.

A journal article with 2 authors

Santen L, Krauth W. 2000 Absence of thermodynamic phase transition in a model glass former. Nature 405, 550–551.

A journal article with 3 authors

Martinez-Mateo J, Elkouss D, Martin V. 2013 Key reconciliation for high performance quantum key distribution. Sci. Rep. 3, 1576.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Quimby RM et al. 2011 Hydrogen-poor superluminous stellar explosions. Nature 474, 487–489.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Zecchina A, Califano S. 2017 The Development of Catalysis. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Peruzzini M, Gonsalvi L, editors. 2011 Phosphorus Compounds: Advanced Tools in Catalysis and Material Sciences. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Sebastiani P, Jeneralczuk J, Ramoni MF. 2006 Design and Analysis of Screening Experiments with Microarrays. In Screening: Methods for Experimentation in Industry, Drug Discovery, and Genetics (eds A Dean, S Lewis), pp. 115–138. New York, NY: Springer.

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 Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

Blog post

Andrews R. 2016 Rare Antibody Found To Neutralize 98% Of All HIV Strains. IFLScience. See https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/rare-antibody-neutralize-98-hiv-strains/ (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. 2009 School Meal Programs: Improved Reviews, Federal Guidance, and Data Collection Needed to Address Counting and Claiming Errors.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Akers K. 2017 The Impact of Work-Family Conflict, Gender, and Family-Friendly Policies on Organizational Attractiveness and Job Pursuit Intentions. Doctoral dissertation, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL.

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

Ruprecht T. 2011 In Too Deep. New York Times, 7 July. , MM50.

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	Proceedings of the Royal Society B
Abbreviation	Proc. Biol. Sci.
ISSN (print)	0962-8452
ISSN (online)	1471-2954
Scope	General Agricultural and Biological Sciences General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology General Environmental Science General Immunology and Microbiology General Medicine