How to format your references using the Marine Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Marine Biology. 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	Download the output style file
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

Moore P (2005) Cell biology: ion channels and stem cells. Nature 438:699–704.

A journal article with 2 authors

Over H, Seitsonen AP (2002) Surface chemistry. Oxidation of metal surfaces. Science 297:2003–2005.

A journal article with 3 authors

Griffin BM, Schott J, Schink B (2007) Nitrite, an electron donor for anoxygenic photosynthesis. Science 316:1870.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Zhang G, Wu H, Li G, Huang Q, Yang C, Huang F, Liao F, Lin J (2013) New high T(c) multiferroics KBiFe₂O₅ with narrow band gap and promising photovoltaic effect. Sci Rep 3:1265.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Boillot M (2014) Advanced Smart Grids for Distribution System Operators: Volume 1. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Baltes J, Lagoudakis MG, Naruse T, Ghidary SS (eds) (2010) RoboCup 2009: Robot Soccer World Cup XIII. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Burkhardt CE, Leventhal JJ (2008) Stationary States in One Dimension II. In: Leventhal JJ (ed) Foundations of Quantum Physics. Springer, New York, NY, pp 1–56

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 Marine Biology.

Blog post

Hamilton K (2014) Watch A Hornet Be Cooked Alive By Bees. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/hornet-cooked-alive-bees/. 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 (2016) Highlights of a Forum: Data and Analytics Innovation: Emerging Opportunities and Challenges. 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

Mills Campbell D (2017) Exploratory Inquiry: Fundraising at Historically Black Colleges and Universities to Reduce Resource Dependence. Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix

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

Yee V (2014) Rumors Fly Among Hasidim About Abducted Man’s Death. New York Times A19.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Moore 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Over and Seitsonen 2002; Moore 2005).

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

Two authors: (Over and Seitsonen 2002)
Three or more authors: (Zhang et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Marine Biology
Abbreviation	Mar. Biol.
ISSN (print)	0025-3162
ISSN (online)	1432-1793
Scope	Aquatic Science Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Ecology