How to format your references using the Life Sciences, Society and Policy citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Life Sciences, Society and Policy. 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

Navrotsky A. Nuclear Materials. Taking the measure of molten uranium oxide. Science. 2014 Nov 21;346(6212):916–7.

A journal article with 2 authors

Giljohann DA, Mirkin CA. Drivers of biodiagnostic development. Nature. 2009 Nov 26;462(7272):461–4.

A journal article with 3 authors

Pier H, Kapon E, Moser M. Strain effects and phase transitions in photonic resonator crystals. Nature. 2000 Oct 19;407(6806):880–3.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Bakal C, Linding R, Llense F, Heffern E, Martin-Blanco E, Pawson T, et al. Phosphorylation networks regulating JNK activity in diverse genetic backgrounds. Science. 2008 Oct 17;322(5900):453–6.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Alexander M, Walkenbach J. Excel® Dashboards & Reports. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, Inc.; 2010.

An edited book

Ramachandran KM. Stochastic Differential Games. Theory and Applications. Tsokos CP, editor. Paris: Atlantis Press; 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

Gavryushenko DA, Sysoev VM, Matzui LY, Golub OA, Prylutskyy YI, Ogloblya OV, et al. Calculation of the Density Profile of Liquid Located in the Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotube. In: Buzaneva E, Scharff P, editors. Frontiers of Multifunctional Integrated Nanosystems. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2005. p. 23–30.

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 Life Sciences, Society and Policy.

Blog post

Andrews R. Hulk-Like Antibiotics Seen Physically Tearing Superbugs Apart [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2017 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/hulklike-antibiotics-physically-tearing-superbugs-apart/

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. Puerto Rico: Characteristics of the Island’s Maritime Trade and Potential Effects of Modifying the Jones Act. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2013 Mar. Report No.: GAO-13-260.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Clarke PN. Program evaluation: A study to evaluate the effectiveness of an alternative education program in a rural county of a mid-Atlantic U.S. state [Doctoral dissertation]. [Minneapolis, MN]: Capella University; 2008.

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

Barron J. Actually, Please Don’t Swipe Again: New York’s MetroCard Will Be Phased Out. New York Times. 2017 Oct 23;A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Navrotsky 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Giljohann and Mirkin 2009; Navrotsky 2014).

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

Two authors: (Giljohann and Mirkin 2009)
Three or more authors: (Bakal et al. 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	Life Sciences, Society and Policy
Abbreviation	Life Sci. Soc. Policy
ISSN (online)	2195-7819
Scope