How to format your references using the SCIENCE CHINA Life Sciences citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for SCIENCE CHINA Life 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

Glotzer, M. (2005). The molecular requirements for cytokinesis 307, 1735–1739.

A journal article with 2 authors

Burdon, J.J., Thrall, P.H. (2009). Coevolution of plants and their pathogens in natural habitats 324, 755–756.

A journal article with 3 authors

Zanardi, I., Zifarelli, G., Pusch, M. (2013). An optical assay of the transport activity of ClC-7 3, 1231.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Ziu, E., Hadden, C., Li, Y., Lowery, C.L., 3rd, Singh, P., Ucer, S.S., et al. (2014). Effect of serotonin on platelet function in cocaine exposed blood 4, 5945.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Gray, D.F., Malone, S.W. (2008). Macrofinancial Risk Analysis (Chichester, West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.),.

An edited book

Ho, J.D., Kroll, M.W., editors. (2009). TASER® Conducted Electrical Weapons: Physiology, Pathology, and Law (Boston, MA: Springer US),.

A chapter in an edited book

Saliou, G., Théaudin, M., Join-Lambert Vincent, C., Souillard-Scemama, R. (2014). Watershed Infarction In Practical Guide to Neurovascular Emergencies, M. Theaudin, C. Join-Lambert Vincent, R. Souillard-Scemama, eds. (Paris: Springer), pp. 69–75.

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 SCIENCE CHINA Life Sciences.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015). Publish Or Perish Culture Encourages Scientists To Cut Corners [Internet] IFLScience),.

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). Information Technology: Census Bureau Testing of 2010 Decennial Systems Can Be Strengthened (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office),. Report No.: GAO-09-414T.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Busalacchi, N.M. (2013). Access to healthcare: Disparities between the non-elderly adult population Doctoral dissertation [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach),.

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

Gordon, M.R., Simons, M. (2017). War Crimes Office May Be Shuttered As Tillerson Reorganizes State Dept , A16.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Glotzer 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Burdon and Thrall 2009; Glotzer 2005).

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

Two authors: (Burdon and Thrall 2009)
Three or more authors: (Ziu et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	SCIENCE CHINA Life Sciences
Abbreviation	Sci. China Life Sci.
ISSN (print)	1674-7305
ISSN (online)	1869-1889
Scope	General Agricultural and Biological Sciences General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology General Environmental Science