LITERATURE CITED
The bibliography is to be the last page of your science paper and just before any appendices. The most common heading of the bibliographic list is that of Literature Cited which is a list that includes only works that have been referred to or cited in your paper. The articles that you include in your list have been either published, scheduled for publication, or deposited in libraries as theses or dissertations.
The style of a bibliographic list depends upon the system of citation used in the different scientific disciplines. Most journals in the biological sciences use the author-date system. In the physical sciences a number system is used.
If you choose to use the author-date, then the name(s) of the author(s) and the year are included in the text of your paper as shown below:
One author Bellrose (1950) reported that...
Two authors Smith and Brown (1972) reported finding...
Three or more authors Johnston et al. (1958) reported that wood ducks were once abundant in Illinois.
The placement of parentheses depends upon sentence structure and can be placed as in the following:
Wood ducks were once abundant in Illinois (Johnston et al., 1958).
In your bibliographic list using the author-date system, the entries are listed alphabetically by author. The main parts of a complete entry for an article in a periodical are (i) name(s) of authors, (ii) year of publication, (iii) title of book, (iv) name and city of publisher, (v) number of pages in books. Examples are following:
Journal Article
Smith, J. & Brown, J. (1972). Ecological studies of the genus Xiantha. J. Ecology 46(2), 42-48.
Book
Smith, J. & Brown, J. (1972). Invertebrate Zoology. St. Louis, MO: McGraw-Hill.
If you choose to use the number system, as is customary in some of the physical sciences, list the references in the order in which they are cited in your paper. Number the entries and carefully check the citation numbers in the text of your paper against the final reference numbers.
Use numbers enclosed in parentheses to key each entry in your bibliography as in the following examples.
A full understanding of the cause of the darkness of the night sky was not obtained until Harrison published his solution to the problem in 1964 (12).
More recently Charles (9) has given a detailed explanation of the hierarchical structure of the universe.
The main parts for a journal entry in this system are (I) name(s) of the author(s), (ii) title of article, (iii) name of the journal with volume, (iv) initial page number, (v) year of publication.
Each entry is preceded by a numeral keying the reference to the paper, followed by a period. An example is:
2. Doe, G.E. & Roe, P.S. (1952). The Development of the Betatron. Am. J. Phys., 20, 298.
An example for a book entry is:
6. Bergman, P.G. (1942). Introduction to the Theory of Relativity (p. 213). New York: Prentice-Hall.
What literature should you look for in your review of what we know about the problem? Focus your efforts on the primary research journals - the journals that publish original research articles. Although you may read some general background references (encyclopedias, textbooks, lab manuals, style manuals, etc.) to get yourself acquainted with the subject area, do not cite these because they contain information that is considered fundamental or "common" knowledge within the discipline. Cite instead, articles that reported specific results relevant to your study. Learn as soon as possible, how to find the primary literature (research journals) and review articles rather than depending on reference books. The articles listed in the Literature Cited of relevant papers you find are a good starting point to move backwards in a line of inquiry. Most academic libraries support the Citation Index - an index which is useful for tracking a line of inquiry forward in time. Some of the newer search engines will actually send you alerts of new papers that cite particular articles of interest to you. Review articles are particularly useful because they summarize all the research done on a narrow subject area over a brief period of time (a year to a few years in most cases).