Bibliographic citations

Bibliographic citations are strings of data that specify the existence of publications. Examples:

Book:

Masters, C. O. 1975. Encyclopedia of live foods. Neptune City, NJ : T.F.H. Publications.

General format: Author (first author; last name, first initials; followed by others others; first initials, last name). Year. Title. Place of Publication: Publisher.

Article:

Moyle, R., D.J. Fairbairn, , J. Ripi , M. Crowe, and J.M. Botella 2005. Developing pineapple fruit has a small transcritome dominated by metallothionen. Journal of Experimental Botany 56:101-112.

General Format: Author (first author; last name, first initials; followed by others others; first initials, last name). Year. Title. Name of Journal. Volume Number) : Page Numbers.

In the above example of an article citation, we can make out the names of the authors, the year of publication, the title of the article and the name of the journal.

Also, we have the puzzling numbers "56:101-112." If you think about the physical nature of a periodical article, you know that they tend to occupy a range of pages, and what better way to express that range of pages by using a range of numbers (like 101-112)? But what about the "56"? In general, a bibliographic citation for an article goes from unit: subunit. In this case, the "unit" in question is a volume number.

You can see that the article citation has a level of complexity not present in the book citation. Whenever you have two titles (one for the article, and one for the journal) and a range of numbers (representing a distinct range of pages), we have a citation specifying a subunit (the article) within a larger unit (a journal), you probably have a citation to an article.¹

You can often get useful citations from the bibliographies (also called "References" or "Literature Cited") at the end of scholarly articles. You can also get them from searching in databases (see "How to find Articles" ).

There are many format styles of citations. For this lab, you will be using a modified version of the Name-Year format for end references used in the book Scientific Style and Format, from the Council of Science Editors²

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¹It could also be a chapter in a book, but that is far less common.²Council of Science Editors. 2006. Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers. Reston, VA : Council of Science Editors in cooperation with the Rockefeller University Press. See page 492 (general description) and pages 504 onward for details. Ref Desk T11 S386 2006

Book Cover image for "Scientific Style and Format"

Links:

CBE Style Guide for Bibliographies and Footnotes (University of Washington Libraries. "CBE" was the older name for "CSE". )

Create a CBE name-year reference list (Univ of Wisconsin - Madison)

CSE Documentation | Printable Version (Austin Community College. Has examples of electronic sources)

Sourceaid's Citation Builder (Use the "CSE style")

Curtis Clark's Formatting a Bibliography

Bibliographic Citations

Curtis Clark's Introduction to the Literature of Biology (About Primary Literature)

Journal and Article Types

Scholarly vs Popular Periodicals (Youtube video, Vanderbuilt University, Length: 3:10 )

James S. Koga
jskoga@csupomona.edu
August 25, 2009