How to format your references using the Reproductive Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Reproductive 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

[1]

Keimer B. Physics. Broken Cooper pairs caught bouncing around. Science 2003;300:1381–2.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Deng M, Hochstrasser M. Spatially regulated ubiquitin ligation by an ER/nuclear membrane ligase. Nature 2006;443:827–31.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Reinhard CT, Planavsky NJ, Lyons TW. Long-term sedimentary recycling of rare sulphur isotope anomalies. Nature 2013;497:100–3.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

[1]

Maharana S, Wang J, Papadopoulos DK, Richter D, Pozniakovsky A, Poser I, et al. RNA buffers the phase separation behavior of prion-like RNA binding proteins. Science 2018;360:918–21.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Chappell D. The JCT Minor Works Building Contracts 2005. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd; 2008.

An edited book

[1]

Kwuida L, Sertkaya B, editors. Formal Concept Analysis: 8th International Conference, ICFCA 2010, Agadir, Morocco, March 15-18, 2010. Proceedings. vol. 5986. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2010.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Kolodkin V, Murin A. Prediction of Quantitative Assessments of Effects on Nature from Potential Accidents at Chemical Warfare Agent Facilities. In: Kolodkin VM, Ruck W, editors. Ecological Risks Associated with the Destruction of Chemical Weapons, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2006, p. 45–55.

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 Reproductive Biology.

Blog post

[1]

Davis J. Bioluminescence In Fish Is Far More Widespread Than Previously Thought. IFLScience 2016.

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. A-10 Close Air Support Aircraft. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1974.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Grugan PK. The mindfulness practice of clinicians: A systematic review. Doctoral dissertation. California State University, Long Beach, 2016.

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]

St. John Kelly E. PLAYING IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD. New York Times 1995:1315.

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	Reproductive Biology
Abbreviation	Reprod. Biol.
ISSN (print)	1642-431X
Scope	Animal Science and Zoology Developmental Biology Endocrinology