BIOL 113 Class Guide

For your scientific proposal, you will be required to provide an adequate citation for each peer reviewed article you utilize to build your proposal. All literature used for your scientific proposal must be cited in-text, as well as under a “Literature Cited” heading at the end of your proposal. This page will provide you with the information necessary for building proper citations for the scientific proposal. 

Every scientific journal seemingly has a different format for how authors should format their citations. In BIOL113, we are going to take a relatively simplistic approach. 

In-Text Citations: 

In-text citations belong in the actual text of your proposal. Anytime you reference or paraphrase material from another source, you should include in-text citations. Your in-text citations should include the following: 

For a Single Author Paper: (Author’s Last Name Year) 

Example: (Smyth 2021) 

For a Two-Author Paper: (First Author’s Last Name & Second Author’s Last Name Year) 

Example: (Smyth & Marcus 2021) 

For a paper with three or more authors: (First Author’s Last Name et al. Year) 

Example: (Smyth et al. 2021) 

Rules for proper use of in-text citations: 

ALL literature referenced in your “Literature Cited” at the end of your proposal MUST also be referenced in-text (and vice-versa). 

Proper in-text citations appear at the end of a sentence, be before the punctuation ending that sentence. 

Example: There will be a single in-text citation at the end of this sentence (Smyth et al. 2021).

You may have more than one in-text citation at the end of any given sentence. To properly format this, simply place a semicolon between the citations, and ensure they are in chronological order. 

Example: There will be multiple in-text citations at the end of this sentence (Armstrong et al. 2020; Marcus et al. 2021; Smyth et al. 2021). 

All citations included in your literature cited MUST include ONLY the following information: 

• The First Name, Last Name and Relevant Initials of ALL AUTHORS

• Year of Publication

• The title of the paper being cited.

• The Name of the Journal

• Volume of the Journal

• Issue # of the Journal

• Page #s of the paper

If the article is missing any of these items (most commonly: volume, issue and/or page numbers) you may omit this information. 

Formatting Examples: 

For a Single Author Paper: 

Last Name, First Initial Middle Initial. Year. Title of Manuscript. Journal. Volume(Issue): Page #s.

Smyth, CW. 2021. How to format a citation for BIOL113. The Journal of Introductory Biology. 1(1): 1-10.

For a Two-Author Paper: 

First Author’s Last Name, First Initial Middle Initial and Second Authors First initial Middle initial Last Name. Year. Title of Manuscript. Journal. Volume(Issue): Page #s.

Smyth, CW and SR Marcus. 2021. Introduction to the Scientific Proposal for BIOL113 students. The Journal of Introductory Biology. 1(2): 11-15. 

For a paper with three or more authors: 

First Author’s Last Name, First initial Middle Initial, Second Author’s First Initial Middle Initial Last Name, Third Authors First Initial Middle initial Last Name, ….. and Last Author’s First Initial Middle Initial Last Name. Year. Title of Manuscript. Journal. Volume(Issue): Page #s.

Smyth, CW, SR Marcus, BE Overton, DP Short and DM Geiser. 2021. Building a scientific proposal with proper experimental design. The Journal of Introductory Biology. 1(3): 56-63. 

Things to keep in mind when building your citations: 

For multi-authored papers, pay attention to the order of the last name and initials between the first author and all following authors. Last name should always come first for the first author, and then we switch to first name first for all following authors. 

Punctuation is important - pay attention to it!