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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Knight, J., 2001. US rejects bioweapon inspections. Nature 412, 365.
A journal article with 2 authors
Rehren, T., Pusch, E.B., 2005. Late Bronze Age glass production at Qantir-Piramesses, Egypt. Science 308, 1756–1758.
A journal article with 3 authors
Wild, K., Sinning, I., Cusack, S., 2001. Crystal structure of an early protein-RNA assembly complex of the signal recognition particle. Science 294, 598–601.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Xue, W., Zender, L., Miething, C., Dickins, R.A., Hernando, E., Krizhanovsky, V., Cordon-Cardo, C., Lowe, S.W., 2007. Senescence and tumour clearance is triggered by p53 restoration in murine liver carcinomas. Nature 445, 656–660.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Zinkin, J., 2013. Rebuilding Trust in Banks. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester, UK.
An edited book
König, T., Debus, M., Tsebelis, G. (Eds.), 2011. Reform Processes and Policy Change: Veto Players and Decision-Making in Modern Democracies, 1st ed, Studies in Public Choice. Springer, New York, NY.
A chapter in an edited book
Dämmrich, M.E., Kreipe, H.H., 2015. Standardized Processing of Native Tissue in Breast Pathology, in: Dietel, M., Wittekind, C., Bussolati, G., Winterfeld, M. von (Eds.), Pre-Analytics of Pathological Specimens in Oncology, Recent Results in Cancer Research. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 45–53.

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., 2014. Live Webcast of Expeditions 41/42 Crew to ISS [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/space/live-webcast-expeditions-4142-crew-iss/ (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, 2005. Department of Education’s Update of the State and Other Tax Allowance for Student Aid Award Year 2005-2006 (No. GAO-05-408R). 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
Leal, L.S., 2016. Pair correlations in clean magnetic Josephson junctions (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
Williams, J., 2017. Hey, Modernity, They’re Just Not Into You. New York Times C2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Knight, 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Knight, 2001; Rehren and Pusch, 2005).

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

  • Two authors: (Rehren and Pusch, 2005)
  • Three or more authors: (Xue et al., 2007)

About the journal

Full journal titleSaudi Journal of Biological Sciences
AbbreviationSaudi J. Biol. Sci.
ISSN (print)1319-562X
ScopeGeneral Agricultural and Biological Sciences

Other styles