How to format your references using the Theory in Biosciences citation style

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

Gingrich N (2000) SCIENCE PRIORITIES: An Opportunities-Based Science Budget. Science 290:1303

A journal article with 2 authors

Sprent J, Tough DF (2001) T cell death and memory. Science 293:245–248

A journal article with 3 authors

Tasker SZ, Standley EA, Jamison TF (2014) Recent advances in homogeneous nickel catalysis. Nature 509:299–309

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Kocot KM, Cannon JT, Todt C, et al (2011) Phylogenomics reveals deep molluscan relationships. Nature 477:452–456

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Mansour M, Wilhite R, Rowe J (2017) Guide to Ruminant Anatomy. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Zeng W (2013) Ricci Flow for Shape Analysis and Surface Registration: Theories, Algorithms and Applications. Springer, New York, NY

A chapter in an edited book

Pérez O. J, Pazos R. RA, Frausto-Solís J, et al (2005) An Approach for Solving Very Large Scale Instances of the Design Distribution Problem for Distributed Database Systems. In: Ramos FF, Larios Rosillo V, Unger H (eds) Advanced Distributed Systems: 5th International School and Symposium, ISSADS 2005, Guadalajara, Mexico, January 24-28, 2005, Revised Selected Papers. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 33–42

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 Theory in Biosciences.

Blog post

Andrew E (2015) Ice ‘Lightning’ May Have Helped Life Survive Snowball Earth. 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 (1997) Core Competencies for Financial System Analysts in the Federal Government (Exposure Draft). 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

Bao J (2010) Design enhancements in repetitive and interative learning control. Doctoral dissertation, Columbia 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

(nyt) SK (2003) World Briefing | Europe: Russia: A Call For More Money To Fight Aids. New York Times A6

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Gingrich 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Gingrich 2000; Sprent and Tough 2001).

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

Two authors: (Sprent and Tough 2001)
Three or more authors: (Kocot et al. 2011)

About the journal

Full journal title	Theory in Biosciences
Abbreviation	Theory Biosci.
ISSN (print)	1431-7613
ISSN (online)	1611-7530
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Applied Mathematics Statistics and Probability General Medicine