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

Sutherland WJ (2005) The best solution. Nature 435:569

A journal article with 2 authors

Matzke MA, Matzke AJ (2000) Cloning problems don’t surprise plant biologists. Science 288:2318b

A journal article with 3 authors

Schreiber RD, Old LJ, Smyth MJ (2011) Cancer immunoediting: integrating immunity’s roles in cancer suppression and promotion. Science 331:1565–1570

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Nakanishi-Matsui M, Zheng YW, Sulciner DJ, et al (2000) PAR3 is a cofactor for PAR4 activation by thrombin. Nature 404:609–613

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hirsch F, Kemp J, Ilkka J (2006) Mobile Web Services. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Gray A, Jeffery K, Shao J (eds) (2008) Sharing Data, Information and Knowledge: 25th British National Conference on Databases, BNCOD 25, Cardiff, UK, July 7-10, 2008. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Wang R, Yan Y, Tan B (2014) Three-Dimensional Nonlinear Force-Free Field Reconstruction of Solar Active Region 11158 by Direct Boundary Integral Equation. In: Tomczyk S, Zhang J, Bastian T (eds) Coronal Magnetometry. Springer, New York, NY, pp 45–67

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

Andrew E (2015) US Military Screwed Up And Accidentally Sent Live Anthrax to Labs. In: IFLScience. 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 (1990) Issues to Be Considered During Deliberations to Reauthorize the Federal-Aid Highway Program. 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

Henderson R (2010) The effect of Interactive Metronome training on sports confidence and putting performance. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

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

Kanter J (2017) Google Yields To Regulators In Eurozone. New York Times B1

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Sutherland 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Matzke and Matzke 2000; Sutherland 2005).

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

Two authors: (Matzke and Matzke 2000)
Three or more authors: (Nakanishi-Matsui et al. 2000)

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