Dr. Abel Scribe's Guide to CBE Biology Style and Documentation

Council of Biology Editors / Council of Science Editors? CBE/CSE style imposes conventions that are a little foreign to American English. American bioscience journals tend to follow their own unique variant of CBE/CSE style. The Student's Guide to CBE/CSE Style follows the style used by the journal BioScience. This is the journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, an organization that represents over 80 major research societies (style guide at CSE Web site).

The Student's Guide is an electronic style guide that navigates much like a web site, but with added indexing and search capabilities. It works with a reader already installed with the Windows® operating system.

Download: Student's Guide to Biostyle 1.18 (Windows 630KB)

Re-Revised Edition! The Student's Guide to Biostyle now includes a reference style sheet for the citation-sequence (endnote) format as well as the original name-year (author-date) reference format. If you have a problem downloading or using the guide, please send a message to docscribe@email.com. Revised January 2003.

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Endnote (Bibliographies Made Easy?). Version XI. 2007. ISI Research Soft. Windows and Mac.

Amazon Student Versions $95: [Windows] [Mac].

Endnote automatically formats references for you--in standard AMA, APA, CBE, Chicago, ICMJE, and MLA styles, as well as a vast number of journal styles (over 1000). It is the standard of bibliographic software, required at many top universities. Surf for sources online; download bibliographic material from any online database or library catalog. The program comes with templates (for MSWord) that will set up your word processor for you! Endnote is your personal research assistant.

Warning! Reviews of recent versions are poor! Older editions, versions 6 or 7, may be a better buy. These may be available at amazon, used.

A free 30-day trial version is available at the Endnote website.

Taylor, Barry N. 1995. Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI).: Gaithersburg, MD: National Institute of Standards and Technology, Special Publication 811. 80 pp. http://physics.nist.gov/Document/sp811.pdf

Free Style Guide for Numbers. The NIST is the official representative of the United States before the Convention du Metre which in turn is the body that defines the International System of Units (SI) for the world scientific community. A free 80 page style guide is available from their website. This link (click on the title above) is directly to the document which is in Adobe PDF format. To download rather than display the document click the right mouse button on the link and select "Save Target As."

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Council of Science Editors. 2006. Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors,

Editors, and Publishers, 7th ed. $59.95, 628 pages.

How useful? Though the new edition appears to be selling well, it is not clear who is using it. Most journals in the biosciences follow their own proprietary style. Some give lip service to the CSE manual, then send you to older editions to use as a reference! If you really need it, you already know it. If in doubt, check a library copy to determine if this book will meet your needs. It works best as a special reference for nuances in nomenclature, and for the details of various forms of measurement. Several major fields in the sciences have their own style (physics, chemistry, electrical engineering) and publish their own style guide. Where this fits is a bit of a mystery.

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