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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Charron DJ (2009) Obituary: Jean Dausset (1916-2009). Nature 460:338
A journal article with 2 authors
Cuffey KM, Marshall SJ (2000) Substantial contribution to sea-level rise during the last interglacial from the Greenland ice sheet. Nature 404:591–594
A journal article with 3 authors
Purdy TP, Peterson RW, Regal CA (2013) Observation of radiation pressure shot noise on a macroscopic object. Science 339:801–804
A journal article with 5 or more authors
Gorthi A, Romero JC, Loranc E, et al (2018) EWS-FLI1 increases transcription to cause R-loops and block BRCA1 repair in Ewing sarcoma. Nature 555:387–391

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Han CC, Akcasu AZ (2011) Scattering and Dynamics of Polymers. John Wiley & Sons (Asia) Pte Ltd, Singapore
An edited book
Jensen W, Andersen OK, Akay M (eds) (2014) Replace, Repair, Restore, Relieve – Bridging Clinical and Engineering Solutions in Neurorehabilitation: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on NeuroRehabilitation (ICNR2014), Aalborg, 24-26 June, 2014. Springer International Publishing, Cham
A chapter in an edited book
Krzyścin JW, Borkowski J, Głowacka A, et al (2014) Half Century of the Ozone Observations at the Central Geophysical Observatory, IGF PAS, Belsk, Poland. In: Bialik R, Majdański M, Moskalik M (eds) Achievements, History and Challenges in Geophysics: 60th Anniversary of the Institute of Geophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 85–107

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) Disappearing Hedgehogs Show Familiarity May Be A Curse. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/disappearing-hedgehogs-show-familiarity-may-be-curse/. 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 (2007) Information Technology: VA and DOD Are Making Progress in Sharing Medical Information, but Are Far from Comprehensive Electronic Medical Records. 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
Toosi F (2017) Decision Analysis Techniques for Adult Learners: Application to Leadership. Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine 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
Hollander S (2002) Colleges Like Sarah Lawrence Are Putting Poets in Motion. New York Times D1

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Charron 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Cuffey and Marshall 2000; Charron 2009).

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

  • Two authors: (Cuffey and Marshall 2000)
  • Three or more authors: (Gorthi et al. 2018)

About the journal

Full journal titleSymbiosis
AbbreviationSymbiosis
ISSN (print)0334-5114
ISSN (online)1878-7665
ScopeGeneral Agricultural and Biological Sciences

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