There are many different ways of citing and writing references, and the choice of style will depend on the context in which a text is written and published. The various disciplines in science, technology, social sciences and humanities all have their own specific conventions regarding referencing. Every academic journal also has its own specific reference style.
The two most common reference styles in science are the Vancouver style and the Harvard style. In the Vancouver style, each source is referred to by an individual number according to the order in which they appear and the references in the reference list are arranged in numeric order. The Harvard style is an “author/date” system, where the in-text citations consist of author(s) and year of publication, and the references in the reference list are arranged in alphabetic order.
The Harvard style is the most common way of referencing in biology, and it is the style used at the departments of Biology and Environmental science at Lund University. The Harvard reference style is, however, not a uniform style with strict rules. There are many different reference styles based on the Harvard referencing system. The most widely used among these is the APA style, developed by the American Psychological Association. The APA style is also the reference style used at the departments of Biology and Environmental science.
To learn more about how to write and cite according to the APA (7th edition), see the Reference guide for APA 7th edition.