How to format your references using the Interdisciplinary Sciences: Computational Life Sciences citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Interdisciplinary Sciences: Computational Life Sciences. 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

Black DE (2002) Climate variability. The rains may be a-comin’. Science 297:528–529

A journal article with 2 authors

Pelham RJ, Chang F (2002) Actin dynamics in the contractile ring during cytokinesis in fission yeast. Nature 419:82–86

A journal article with 3 authors

Martinón-Torres M, Rehren T, Freestone IC (2006) Mullite and the mystery of Hessian wares. Nature 444:437–438

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Yan H, Park SH, Finkelstein G, et al (2003) DNA-templated self-assembly of protein arrays and highly conductive nanowires. Science 301:1882–1884

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sedivy J, Carlson G (2011) Sold on Language. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Barros M, Labiche Y (2015) Search-Based Software Engineering: 7th International Symposium, SSBSE 2015, Bergamo, Italy, September 5-7, 2015, Proceedings, 1st ed. 2015. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Lynch J, MacKenzie G (2014) Frailty Models with Structural Dispersion. In: MacKenzie G, Peng D (eds) Statistical Modelling in Biostatistics and Bioinformatics: Selected Papers. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 35–44

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 Interdisciplinary Sciences: Computational Life Sciences.

Blog post

Andrew E (2014) Watch Giant Worm Crawl Out Of Dead Spider. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/watch-giant-worm-crawl-out-dead-spider/. 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 (1973) Propriety of Payment of Transportation and Travel Expenses. 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

Clater MJ (2009) Interposed between God and man: Agency in the Requiems of Berlioz and Fauré. Doctoral dissertation, Indiana 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

Crow K (2003) A Cultural Conundrum: The Chocolate Fortune Cookie. New York Times 146

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	Interdisciplinary Sciences: Computational Life Sciences
Abbreviation	Interdiscip. Sci.
ISSN (print)	1913-2751
ISSN (online)	1867-1462
Scope	General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology Computer Science Applications Health Informatics