How to format your references using the Symbiosis citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Symbiosis. 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

Giacovazzo C (2011) Herbert Hauptman (1917-2011). Nature 479:300

A journal article with 2 authors

Koechlin E, Hyafil A (2007) Anterior prefrontal function and the limits of human decision-making. Science 318:594–598

A journal article with 3 authors

Almeda R, Connelly TL, Buskey EJ (2014) Novel insight into the role of heterotrophic dinoflagellates in the fate of crude oil in the sea. Sci Rep 4:7560

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Wang H, Kong L, Zhang J, et al (2014) The pseudoginsenoside F11 ameliorates cisplatin-induced nephrotoxicity without compromising its anti-tumor activity in vivo. Sci Rep 4:4986

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Pashley RM, Karaman ME (2005) Applied Colloid and Surface Chemistry. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Khojasteh SC (2011) Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics Quick Guide. Springer, New York, NY

A chapter in an edited book

Nguyen GP, Andersen HJ (2011) Fast and Efficient Local Features Detection for Building Recognition. In: Kwaśnicka H, Jain LC (eds) Innovations in Intelligent Image Analysis. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 87–104

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 Symbiosis.

Blog post

Carpineti A (2015) Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Wear A Bra, According To Science. In: IFLScience. Accessed 30 Oct 2018

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 (1999) Mass Transit: Status of New Starts Transit Projects With Full Funding Grant Agreements. 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

Goodison SE (2014) The undiscovered country: Homicide, dynamic change, and deterrence in Washington, D.C. Neighborhoods, 1998-2006. Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park

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

Leguizamo J (2016) ‘Too Bad You’re Latin.’ New York Times A27

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Giacovazzo 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Koechlin and Hyafil 2007; Giacovazzo 2011).

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

Two authors: (Koechlin and Hyafil 2007)
Three or more authors: (Wang et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Symbiosis
Abbreviation	Symbiosis
ISSN (print)	0334-5114
ISSN (online)	1878-7665
Scope	General Agricultural and Biological Sciences