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

da Silva Copertino, M. (2011). Add coastal vegetation to the climate critical list 473, 255.

A journal article with 2 authors

Chin, L., Gray, J.W. (2008). Translating insights from the cancer genome into clinical practice 452, 553–563.

A journal article with 3 authors

Moore, S.W., Biais, N., Sheetz, M.P. (2009). Traction on immobilized netrin-1 is sufficient to reorient axons 325, 166.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Brissett, N.C., Pitcher, R.S., Juarez, R., Picher, A.J., Green, A.J., Dafforn, T.R., et al. (2007). Structure of a NHEJ polymerase-mediated DNA synaptic complex 318, 456–459.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Crowl, D.A. (2003). Understanding Explosions (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.),.

An edited book

Hellmann, K., Rhomberg, W., editors. (2011). Razoxane and Dexrazoxane - Two Multifunctional Agents: Experimental and Clinical Results (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands),.

A chapter in an edited book

Darrigol, O. (2009). Stueckelberg’s Unitary Field Theory of 1936–1939 In E.C.G. Stueckelberg, An Unconventional Figure of Twentieth Century Physics: Selected Scientific Papers with Commentaries, J. Lacki, H. Ruegg, G. Wanders, eds. (Basel: Birkhäuser), pp. 53–72.

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. (2013). Fallstreak holes, aka Hole Punch Clouds [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. (2007). Aviation Security: Federal Coordination for Responding to In-flight Security Threats Has Matured, but Procedures Can Be Strengthened (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office),. Report No.: GAO-07-891R.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Liang, M. (2012). Information, communication and wayfinding: Technology shows us the world 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

(nyt), S.K. (2005). World Briefing | Europe: Ukraine: Russia Lifts Arrest For Ex-Premier , A9.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (da Silva Copertino 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Chin and Gray 2008; da Silva Copertino 2011).

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

Two authors: (Chin and Gray 2008)
Three or more authors: (Brissett et al. 2007)

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