HOW TO WRITE REFERENCES
Rules for references listed
The reference should be double-spaced with hanging indent.
Retain the order of authors alphabetically.
If there are seven or more authors in the reference, write the first three names only followed by et al.
For title of book, journal and proceedings use all lowercase for articles (a, an, the),
coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, for, nor, etc.) and prepositions that are fewer than four letters (on, at, to, by, etc.). For the rest of the words, capitalise the first letter of each word.
Name of journal, book and proceedings are in italics.
Name of article and chapter of book are in sentence case and in roman (non-italic) font.
Volume number and page numbers of journals, article in proceedings or chapter of book are romanised.
Do not include issue number for journal paginated by volume (i.e. continuous pagination)
If journal pagination is by issue (i.e. each issue starts on page 1), write the issue number in roman font.
Use en dash to connect range of pages, not hyphen.
Distinguish the en and em dashes. We use the em-dash to create a break in the structure of a sentence or separate out phrases, i.e. as a stand-in for comma, parenthesis or colon.
There is a period after the page numbers.
There is one space between the colon and the first character following it.
For books, include the publisher name and its town (not state or country).
For proceedings, include the editor(s) as well as date and venue of seminar/conference/workshop.
If there are more than three editors, only write the first author followed by et al.
For name of author, write the last name of followed by initials. Do not write comma after the last name and there is no period between initials.
For reference with two references, use ampersand (&) between the two names. If there are more than three authors, use comma between names and ampersand between the second to last and final author.
Write a period after the last initial and before the year of publication.
With multiple authors, use an ampersand (&).
Do not include unpublished items (forthcoming, accepted, in press) in the reference list.
Where available, write the digital object identifier (doi) of article at the end of the reference (example see below).
CHANDEL AK, ANTUNES FFA, ANJOS V ET AL. 2013. Ultra-structural mapping of sugarcane bagasse after oxalic acid fiber expansion (OAFEX) and ethanol production by Candida shehatae and Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
Biotechnology for Biofuels 6: 4. https://doi.org/10.1186/1754-6834-6-4.
Although we prefer this new format (with secure https and the simple url prefix doi.org), we will still accept the older formats (http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1754-6834-6-4 and doi:10.1186/1754-6834-6-4).
Rules for in-text citations
For reference with one, two and three or more authors, the in-text citations at the end of sentence would be ... (Dawkins 1958), ... (McCutchan & Main 1989) and ... (Thapa et al.
1992) respectively. Sentence should preferably not start with references but if necessary, write reference as Dawkins (1958) ..., McCutchan and Main (1989) ... and Thapa et al.
(1992) ... respectively.
If citing more than one reference, separate references with comma, e.g. (Ho 1994, Garcia
& Morrell 2008).
Examples
Articles
GROGAN J, BLUNDELL AG, LANDIS RM ET AL. 2010. Overharvesting driven by consumer demand leads to population decline: big-leaf mahogany in South America. Conservation Letters 3: 12–20
KENZO T, ICHIE T, HATTORI D, KENDAWANG JJ, SAKURAI K & NINOMIYA I. 2010.
Changes in above- and belowground biomass in early successional tropical secondary forests after shifting cultivation in Sarawak, Malaysia. Forest Ecology and Management 260: 875–882.
PIZZI A & STEPHANOU A. 1994. Phenol–formaldehyde wood adhesives under very alkaline conditions. Part 1—behavior and proposed mechanism. Holzforschung 48: 35–40.
Proceedings
ARIFIN ABDU, AZANI MA, NIK MUHAMAD MAJID & ZAKI MH. 2004. Effect of sewage sludge application on the growth performance of five timber tree species in Malaysia. Pp 95–104 in Matsumoto Y, Ueda E & Kobayashi S (eds) Proceedings of the International Workshop on the Landscape Level Rehabilitation of Degraded Tropical Forests. 2–3 March 2004, FFPRI, Tsukuba.
MAILINA J, NOR AZAH MA, FADZUREENA J ET AL. 2011. Identification of volatile constituents from fresh sample of Baeckea fruitescens L and their distilled oils. Pp 41–45 in Mastura M et al. (eds) Harnessing The Tropical Herbal Heritage: Recent Advances in R&D and Commercialisation. Proceedings of the Seminar on Medicinal and Aromatic Plant (MAPs 2010). 3–4 August 2010, Kepong.
Book
CHANDLER C, CHENEY P, THOMAS P, TRABAUD L & WILLIAMS D. 1983. Fire in Forestry. Volume 1: Forest Fire Behavior and Effects. John Wiley and Sons, New York.
LOVELESS MD & GULLISON RE. 2003. Genetic variation in natural mahogany population in Bolivia. Pp 9–28 in Lugo A et al. (eds) Big-leaf Mahogany: Genetics, Ecology and Management. Springer-Verlag, New York.
VAN WAGNER CE. 1987. Development and Structure of the Canadian Forest Fire Weather Index System. Forestry Technical Report No. 35. Canadian Forestry Service, Ottawa.
