How to format your references using the acta ethologica citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for acta ethologica. 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

Pentland A (2015) Economics: Simple market models fail the test. Nature 525:190–191

A journal article with 2 authors

Watmough SA, Dillon PJ (2003) Mycorrhizal weathering in base-poor forests. Nature 423:823–4; discussion 824

A journal article with 3 authors

Hiroi T, Zolensky ME, Pieters CM (2001) The Tagish Lake meteorite: a possible sample from a D-type asteroid. Science 293:2234–2236

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Cook B, Hardy RW, McConnaughey WB, Zuker CS (2008) Preserving cell shape under environmental stress. Nature 452:361–364

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ambaum MHP (2010) Thermal Physics of the Atmosphere. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Hvoslef-Eide AK, Preil W (eds) (2005) Liquid Culture Systems for in vitro Plant Propagation. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht

A chapter in an edited book

Vrontou S (2016) The Peripheral Processing of Pleasant Touch in Mice. In: Olausson H, Wessberg J, Morrison I, McGlone F (eds) Affective Touch and the Neurophysiology of CT Afferents. Springer, New York, NY, pp 69–83

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 ethologica.

Blog post

Hale T (2016) Here Are Some Common Sex Myths That Everyone Really Needs To Stop Believing. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/here-are-some-common-sex-myths-that-everyone-really-needs-to-stop-believing-/. Accessed 30 Oct 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

Government Accountability Office (1992) Natural Gas: Factors Affecting Approval Times for Construction of Natural Gas Pipelines. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

DeHart WP (2008) The leader liminal sphere: A phenomenological inquiry. Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University

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

Hodara S (2015) Exploring Gender as Disguise and Identity. New York Times CT10

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Pentland 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Watmough and Dillon 2003; Pentland 2015).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Watmough and Dillon 2003)
Three or more authors: (Cook et al. 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	acta ethologica
Abbreviation	Acta Ethol.
ISSN (print)	0873-9749
ISSN (online)	1437-9546
Scope	Animal Science and Zoology Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics