How to format your references using the Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences. 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

Willyard, C., 2013. Pathology: At the heart of the problem. Nature 493, S10-1.

A journal article with 2 authors

Flanagan, J.R., Johansson, R.S., 2003. Action plans used in action observation. Nature 424, 769–771.

A journal article with 3 authors

Philips, J.A., Rubin, E.J., Perrimon, N., 2005. Drosophila RNAi screen reveals CD36 family member required for mycobacterial infection. Science 309, 1251–1253.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Zouni, A., Witt, H.T., Kern, J., Fromme, P., Krauss, N., Saenger, W., Orth, P., 2001. Crystal structure of photosystem II from Synechococcus elongatus at 3.8 A resolution. Nature 409, 739–743.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wolf, E.L., 2012. Nanophysics of Solar and Renewable Energy. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany.

An edited book

Bland, K.I., Büchler, M.W., Csendes, A., Sarr, M.G., Garden, O.J., Wong, J. (Eds.), 2009. General Surgery. Springer, London.

A chapter in an edited book

Hull, E., Jackson, K., Dick, J., 2011. Writing and Reviewing Requirements, in: Jackson, K., Dick, J. (Eds.), Requirements Engineering. Springer, London, pp. 77–91.

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 Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences.

Blog post

Andrew, E., 2015. Extraordinary Black-And-White Photos Of African Wildlife By Laurent Baheux [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1998. FCC: Installment Payment Financing for Personal Communications Services Licensees (No. OGC-99-3). 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

Rahimi, R.M., 2014. Investigation of Porosity Evolution and Orthotropic Axes on Anisotropic Materials (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

Vecsey, G., 2010. Jeter Could Leave the Yankees To Expand His Horizons, and Attire. New York Times B14.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Willyard, 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Flanagan and Johansson, 2003; Willyard, 2013).

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

Two authors: (Flanagan and Johansson, 2003)
Three or more authors: (Zouni et al., 2001)

About the journal

Full journal title	Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences
Abbreviation	Saudi J. Biol. Sci.
ISSN (print)	1319-562X
Scope	General Agricultural and Biological Sciences