Biological Sciences

For this course, you'll be asked to cite your sources using Council of Science Editors (CSE) Name-Year style.

• See the Library's guide to this style

While it's useful to know the rules behind each style, you can use software to auto-format your references. There are software packages such as Mendeley and Zotero that are very useful for writing full papers, but if you just need to generate a quick citation to paste into your document, use ZoteroBib, a pared-down version of Zotero. It will quickly generate an in-text and a bibliography reference for anything from journal articles to YouTube videos. You can choose CSE Name-Year from the style options under Bibliography.

Finding and Citing Images

Most images online are still protected by copyright, but it is generally acceptable to reproduce them for the purposes of an assignment, as long as it's not shared publicly outside the course. There are also lots of search tools that help you find royalty-free images (with a license such as Creative Commons, which is more liberal than copyright, and allows for re-use). For full details on finding and citing images, click the Citing and Writing button on the left-hand menu.

You'll need to find a peer-reviewed journal articles for at least one of your assignments. Peer-reviewed means that the research has been assessed and critiqued by other scientists before being published. You can often find a good article in Google Scholar, but be aware that the occasional disreputable journal creeps in there. It can also be tough to find what you're looking for, because Google Scholar has journals from every discipline, and not a lot of great ways to filter results. 

For a complete guide to finding articles, and a list of useful article databases for Biological Sciences, see the Find Journal Articles section of this guide on the left-hand menu.

Contact your librarian:

Heather Ganshorn
Librarian for Biological & Environmental Sciences & Veterinary Medicine
Heather.Ganshorn@ucalgary.ca