How to format your references using the CBE - Life Sciences Education citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for CBE - Life Sciences Education (LSE). 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

Wisdom, J. (2003). Swimming in spacetime: motion by cyclic changes in body shape. Science (New York, N.Y.), 299(5614), 1865–1869.

A journal article with 2 authors

Piskorowski, R., & Aldrich, R. W. (2002). Calcium activation of BK(Ca) potassium channels lacking the calcium bowl and RCK domains. Nature, 420(6915), 499–502.

A journal article with 3 authors

Bhowmick, N. A., Neilson, E. G., & Moses, H. L. (2004). Stromal fibroblasts in cancer initiation and progression. Nature, 432(7015), 332–337.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Feng, G.-R., Lu, Y., Hao, L., Zhang, F.-H., & Long, G.-L. (2013). Experimental simulation of quantum tunneling in small systems. Scientific Reports, 3, 2232.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Center for Chemical Process Safety. (1995). Guidelines for Safe Process Operations and Maintenance. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Hawthorne, G. (Ed.). (2012). Diabetes Care for the Older Patient: A Practical Handbook. London: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Reed, C. W. (2010). The Chemistry and Physics of the Interface Region and Functionalization. In J. K. Nelson (Ed.), Dielectric Polymer Nanocomposites (pp. 95–131). Boston, MA: Springer US.

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 CBE - Life Sciences Education.

Blog post

Luntz, S. (2014, October 10). Straight Hopping Toads Gain The Most Ground.

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. (2005). Medicaid: States’ Efforts to Maximize Federal Reimbursements Highlight Need for Improved Federal Oversight (No. GAO-05-836T). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Ademiluyi, C. A. (2010). Felony disenfranchisement and how it contributes to the Black electorate (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Arango, T. (2017, June 13). Food Poisoning Sickens Hundreds of Iraqis at U.N.-Run Camp. New York Times, p. A9.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Wisdom, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Piskorowski & Aldrich, 2002; Wisdom, 2003).

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

Two authors: (Piskorowski & Aldrich, 2002)
Three authors: (Bhowmick, Neilson, & Moses, 2004)
6 or more authors: (Feng, Lu, Hao, Zhang, & Long, 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	CBE - Life Sciences Education
Abbreviation	CBE Life Sci. Educ.
ISSN (online)	1931-7913
Scope	General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology Education