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

Ceci, C. (2015). Take concepts of chemistry out of the classroom 522, 7.

A journal article with 2 authors

Loehlin, D.W., Carroll, S.B. (2014). Evolutionary biology: Sex, lies and butterflies 507, 172–173.

A journal article with 3 authors

Spéder, P., Adám, G., Noselli, S. (2006). Type ID unconventional myosin controls left-right asymmetry in Drosophila 440, 803–807.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Sigurdsson, S., Richer, H.B., Hansen, B.M., Stairs, I.H., Thorsett, S.E. (2003). A young white dwarf companion to pulsar B1620-26: evidence for early planet formation 301, 193–196.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Tobias, J., Hochhauser, D. (2014). Cancer and its Management (Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd),.

An edited book

Beck, C., editor. (2010). Clusters in Nuclei: Volume 1 (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer),.

A chapter in an edited book

Wylie, K.R. (2007). Sexuality In Psychological Challenges in Obstetrics and Gynecology: The Clinical Management, J. Cockburn, M.E. Pawson, eds. (London: Springer), pp. 43–50.

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

Fang, J. (2016). Reproduction Declines With Age In Female Turtles Too [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. (1990). Early Childhood Education: What Are the Costs of High-Quality Programs? (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office),. Report No.: HRD-90-43BR.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Klein, K.A. (2009). Vocabulary acquisition via cross-situational learning Doctoral dissertation [Bloomington, IN]: Indiana University),.

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

Chen, D.W., David Goodman, J. (2013). In Naming Top Police Official, De Blasio May Signal Change , A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Ceci 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Ceci 2015; Loehlin and Carroll 2014).

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

Two authors: (Loehlin and Carroll 2014)
Three or more authors: (Sigurdsson et al. 2003)

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