How to format your references using the The Biological Bulletin citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Biological Bulletin. 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

Garman, E. F. 2014. Developments in x-ray crystallographic structure determination of biological macromolecules. Science 343: 1102–1108.

A journal article with 2 authors

Marks, T. J. and M. C. Hersam. 2015. Materials science: Semiconductors grown large and thin. Nature 520: 631–632.

A journal article with 3 authors

Mackenzie, R. B., C. T. Dewberry and K. R. Leopold. 2015. SULFUR CHEMISTRY. Gas phase observation and microwave spectroscopic characterization of formic sulfuric anhydride. Science 349: 58–61.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Polishchuk, I., A. A. Bracha, L. Bloch, D. Levy, S. Kozachkevich, Y. Etinger-Geller, Y. Kauffmann, M. Burghammer, C. Giacobbe, J. Villanova, et al. 2017. Coherently aligned nanoparticles within a biogenic single crystal: A biological prestressing strategy. Science 358: 1294–1298.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Eylert, B. 2006. The Mobile Multimedia Business. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Mateo, C. R., J. Gómez, J. Villalaín and J. M. González-Ros (eds). 2006. Protein-Lipid Interactions: New Approaches and Emerging Concepts. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Vogel†, C. 2010. The True Egoist Is Cooperative. In: Homo Novus – A Human Without Illusions (U. J. Frey, C. Störmer, and K. P. Willführ, eds), pp. 51–63. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

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 The Biological Bulletin.

Blog post

Andrew, E. 2015. Underwater Volcano In West Indies May Erupt Soon. IFLScience.

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. 2013. Pipeline Safety: Better Data and Guidance Needed to Improve Pipeline Operator Incident Response. 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

Gilkes, D. M. 2008. Multiple modes of Mdmx regulation affect p53 activation. University of South Florida, Tampa, FL.

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

Kelly, K. and B. Appelbaum. 2017. Yellen and Trump Aide Are Said to Be on Shortlist for New Leader of the Fed.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Garman, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Garman, 2014; Marks and Hersam, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Marks and Hersam, 2015)
Three or more authors: (Polishchuk et al., 2017)

About the journal

Full journal title	The Biological Bulletin
Abbreviation	Biol. Bull.
ISSN (print)	0006-3185
ISSN (online)	1939-8697
Scope	General Agricultural and Biological Sciences