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

Fuchs E. 2007 Scratching the surface of skin development. Nature 445, 834–842.

A journal article with 2 authors

Cascales E, Christie PJ. 2004 Definition of a bacterial type IV secretion pathway for a DNA substrate. Science 304, 1170–1173.

A journal article with 3 authors

Winter SS, Clark BJ, Taube JS. 2015 Spatial navigation. Disruption of the head direction cell network impairs the parahippocampal grid cell signal. Science 347, 870–874.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Lawniczak MKN et al. 2010 Widespread divergence between incipient Anopheles gambiae species revealed by whole genome sequences. Science 330, 512–514.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Abdullaeva Z. 2017 Nano- and Biomaterials. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

El-Osery A, Prevost J, editors. 2015 Control and Systems Engineering: A Report on Four Decades of Contributions. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Knapp CE. 2016 Experiential Education. In The Foxfire Approach: Inspiration for Classrooms and Beyond (eds H Smith, JC McDermott), pp. 31–43. Rotterdam: SensePublishers.

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

Hamilton K. 2017 How To Cut Through When Talking To Anti-Vaxxers And Anti-Fluoriders. IFLScience. See https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/how-to-cut-through-when-talking-to-anti-vaxxers-and-anti-fluoriders/ (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. 1992 Computer Reservation Systems: Action Needed to Better Monitor the CRS Industry and Eliminate CRS Biases.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Gary M. 2017 Home Range and Habitat Use of Juvenile Green Turtles in a Shallow Tidal Environment. Doctoral dissertation, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL.

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

Feeney K. 2010 Sand, Surf and Quesadillas. New York Times, 30 May. , NJ8.

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

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