How to format your references using the Biological Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Biological Research. 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

1. Cunningham T. Graduate journal: show us the money! Nature. 2004;429:906.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Debenedetti PG, Stillinger FH. Supercooled liquids and the glass transition. Nature. 2001;410:259–67.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Otterbein LR, Graceffa P, Dominguez R. The crystal structure of uncomplexed actin in the ADP state. Science. 2001;293:708–11.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Mayer L, Kazantzidis S, Madau P, Colpi M, Quinn T, Wadsley J. Rapid formation of supermassive black hole binaries in galaxy mergers with gas. Science. 2007;316:1874–7.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Lehr J, Ron P. Foundations of Pulsed Power Technology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2017.

An edited book

1. Feng L. The Chinese Oil Industry: History and Future. Hu Y, Hall CAS, Wang J, editors. New York, NY: Springer; 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Villena JF, Schilders WHA, Miguel Silveira L. Parametric Structure-Preserving Model Order Reduction. In: Hasler P, Mooney V, Reis R, editors. VLSI-SoC: Advanced Topics on Systems on a Chip: A Selection of Extended Versions of the Best Papers of the Fourteenth International Conference on Very Large Scale Integration of System on Chip (VLSI-SoC2007), October 15-17, 2007, Atlanta, USA. Boston, MA: Springer US; 2009. p. 1–20.

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 Biological Research.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Scientists Read Ancient Magnetic Memories Contained Within Meteorites [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. https://www.iflscience.com/space/scientists-read-ancient-magnetic-memories-contained-within-meteorites/. 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

1. Government Accountability Office. Federal Air Marshal Service: Actions Taken to Fulfill Core Mission and Address Workforce Issues. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2009 Jul. Report No.: GAO-09-903T.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

1. Lenz RM. Iron, Arsenic, and Elevated Salinity in the Lower Mississippi River Alluvial Aquifer of Louisiana [Doctoral dissertation]. [ Lafayette, LA]: University of Louisiana; 2017.

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

1. Markoff J. David Bunnell, Tech Magazine Pioneer, Dies at 69. New York Times. 2016 Oct 21;A26.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	Biological Research
ISSN (online)	0717-6287
Scope