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

Lynden-Bell D (2010) Retrospective. Allan Sandage (1926-2010). Science 330:1763

A journal article with 2 authors

Roškar R, Debattista VP (2012) Astronomy. Galactic archaeology. Science 338:333–334

A journal article with 3 authors

Foley S, Tiepolo M, Vannucci R (2002) Growth of early continental crust controlled by melting of amphibolite in subduction zones. Nature 417:837–840

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Tanaka Y, Guhde G, Suter A, et al (2000) Accumulation of autophagic vacuoles and cardiomyopathy in LAMP-2-deficient mice. Nature 406:902–906

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

zur Hausen H (2006) Infections Causing Human Cancer. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, FRG

An edited book

Gertsbakh I (2014) Ternary Networks: Reliability and Monte Carlo. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Abidi K, Xu J-X (2015) Discrete-Time Iterative Learning Control. In: Xu J-X (ed) Advanced Discrete-Time Control: Designs and Applications. Springer, Singapore, pp 109–144

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

Andrew E (2015) NASA Scientists Believe We Will Find Extraterrestrial Life Within The Next 20 Years. 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 (1993) Food Assistance: Schools That Left the National School Lunch Program. 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

Villegas B (2009) The optimization and characterization of superconducting magnesium diboride thin films. Doctoral dissertation, 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

Schweber N, Barker K, Grant J (2014) In New Jersey, Young Players Recall Hazing. New York Times A1

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Lynden-Bell 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Lynden-Bell 2010; Roškar and Debattista 2012).

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

Two authors: (Roškar and Debattista 2012)
Three or more authors: (Tanaka et al. 2000)

About the journal

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