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

Sherman W (2009) Materials science. Building a better nano-biped. Science 324:46–47

A journal article with 2 authors

Retchless AC, Lawrence JG (2007) Temporal fragmentation of speciation in bacteria. Science 317:1093–1096

A journal article with 3 authors

Shen HZ, Wang W, Yi XX (2014) Hall conductance and topological invariant for open systems. Sci Rep 4:6455

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Kyba CCM, Wagner JM, Kuechly HU, et al (2013) Citizen science provides valuable data for monitoring global night sky luminance. Sci Rep 3:1835

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bayés de Luna A (2011) Clinical Arrhythmology. Wiley-Blackwell, Oxford, UK

An edited book

Kalia VC (ed) (2015) Microbial Factories: Biofuels, Waste treatment: Volume 1, 1st ed. 2015. Springer India, New Delhi

A chapter in an edited book

Herrera F, Ventura S, Bello R, et al (2016) Bag-Based Classification Methods. In: Ventura S, Bello R, Cornelis C, et al. (eds) Multiple Instance Learning: Foundations and Algorithms. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 99–126

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

Carpineti C (2017) Melting Ice Could Unleash Ancient Viruses. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/melting-ice-could-unleash-ancient-viruses/. 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 (1988) Aircraft Development: The Advanced Tactical Fighter’s Costs, Schedule, and Performance Goals. 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

Hall D (2015) Resistance, reluctance, and revelation: Examining faculty perceptions of online learning options at a Faith-Based university. 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

Kishkovsky S (2005) New Yorkers in Moscow Follow Stanislavsky’s Path. New York Times B9

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Sherman 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Retchless and Lawrence 2007; Sherman 2009).

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

Two authors: (Retchless and Lawrence 2007)
Three or more authors: (Kyba et al. 2013)

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