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

Austin, J. (2014). A science career story 344, 934.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ramesh, R., Schlom, D.G. (2002). Materials science. Orienting ferroelectric films 296, 1975–1976.

A journal article with 3 authors

Haynes, J.-D., Deichmann, R., Rees, G. (2005). Eye-specific effects of binocular rivalry in the human lateral geniculate nucleus 438, 496–499.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Hochheimer, A., Zhou, S., Zheng, S., Holmes, M.C., Tjian, R. (2002). TRF2 associates with DREF and directs promoter-selective gene expression in Drosophila 420, 439–445.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Decreusefond, L., Moyal, P. (2012). Stochastic Modeling and Analysis of Telecom Networks (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.),.

An edited book

Gold, L.H., Vanderpool, D.L., editors. (2013). Clinical Guide to Mental Disability Evaluations (New York, NY: Springer),.

A chapter in an edited book

Liu, J., Johnston, M.R. (2006). Laboratory Models of Lung Cancer In Tumors of the Chest: Biology, Diagnosis and Management, K.N. Syrigos, C.M. Nutting, C. Roussos, eds. (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), pp. 43–56.

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). Declining Sperm Quality in Older Men Puts the Issue at the Centre of Fertility Debate [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. (1989). FAA Appropriation Issues (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office),. Report No.: T-RCED-89-20.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Dolan, D.J. (2017). Structural Evolution of Martin Crater Thaumasia Planum, Mars 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

Sophia Kishkovsky; Compiled by. (2005). Arts, Briefly; Russia to Sell a Landmark Studio , E2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Austin 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Austin 2014; Ramesh and Schlom 2002).

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

Two authors: (Ramesh and Schlom 2002)
Three or more authors: (Hochheimer et al. 2002)

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