How to format your references using the Acta Ecologica Sinica citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Acta Ecologica Sinica. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Find the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

[1]

D.W. Nicholson, From bench to clinic with apoptosis-based therapeutic agents, Nature 407 (2000) 810–816.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

J.S. Hyde, M.C. Linn, Diversity. Gender similarities in mathematics and science, Science 314 (2006) 599–600.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

S. Balachandran, E. Thomas, G.N. Barber, A FADD-dependent innate immune mechanism in mammalian cells, Nature 432 (2004) 401–405.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

F. Garzarelli, M. Cristelli, G. Pompa, A. Zaccaria, L. Pietronero, Memory effects in stock price dynamics: evidences of technical trading, Sci. Rep. 4 (2014) 4487.

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

[1]

C.L. Smith, Advanced Process Control, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2010.

An edited book

[1]

N.R. Pal, L. Jain, eds., Advanced Techniques in Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Springer, London, 2005.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

S.A. Edwards, N. Vasudevan, Compiling SHIM, in: S.K. Shukla, J.-P. Talpin (Eds.), Synthesis of Embedded Software: Frameworks and Methodologies for Correctness by Construction, Springer US, Boston, MA, 2010: pp. 121–146.

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for Acta Ecologica Sinica.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, Why Should We Place Our Faith In Science?, IFLScience (2015). https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/why-should-we-place-our-faith-science/ (accessed October 30, 2018).

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

[1]

Government Accountability Office, Head Start Programs: Participant Characteristics, Services, and Funding, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1998.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

T. Grosso, Exploring How Older Adults Who Qualify for the Association on Aging with Developmental Disabilities (AADD) Programs and Services Learn to Successfully Age in Place, Doctoral dissertation, Lindenwood University, 2015.

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

[1]

K. Reichardt, Favorites, From Some Insiders, New York Times (2008) MT12.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	Acta Ecologica Sinica
Abbreviation	Sheng Tai Xue Bao
ISSN (print)	1872-2032
Scope