How to format your references using the Acta Oecologica citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Acta Oecologica. 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	Download the output style file
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

Nurse, P., 2003. Systems biology: understanding cells. Nature 424, 883.

A journal article with 2 authors

Falkowski, P.G., de Vargas, C., 2004. Genomics and evolution. Shotgun sequencing in the sea: a blast from the past? Science 304, 58–60.

A journal article with 3 authors

Oye, K.A., Lawson, J.C.H., Bubela, T., 2015. Drugs: Regulate “home-brew” opiates. Nature 521, 281–283.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Walther, P., Pan, J.-W., Aspelmeyer, M., Ursin, R., Gasparoni, S., Zeilinger, A., 2004. De Broglie wavelength of a non-local four-photon state. Nature 429, 158–161.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

McMillan, E.J., 2010. Not-for-Profit Budgeting and Financial Management. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

McKeown, S., Haji, R., Ferguson, N. (Eds.), 2016. Understanding Peace and Conflict Through Social Identity Theory: Contemporary Global Perspectives, Peace Psychology Book Series. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

Huang, W., Gordon, L.S., 2013. Mixed Modeling for Physician-Direct Campaigns, in: Hu, M., Liu, Y., Lin, J. (Eds.), Topics in Applied Statistics: 2012 Symposium of the International Chinese Statistical Association, Springer Proceedings in Mathematics & Statistics. Springer, New York, NY, pp. 39–47.

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 Oecologica.

Blog post

Andrew, E., 2014. Scientists Discover Star Trek Style Invisible “Shield” Thousands Of Miles Above Earth [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/space/scientists-discover-star-trek-style-invisible-shield-thousands-miles-above-earth/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1997. Status of Information Needed to Complete Financial Audit of the District of Columbia’s Dedicated Highway Fund for Fiscal Year 1996 (No. AIMD-97-73R). 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

Swofford, D.M., 2009. Impact of a pharmaceutical company’s leadership development program on participant leadership behavior (Doctoral dissertation). George Washington University, Washington, DC.

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

Pilon, M., 2012. Symbols for Satire. New York Times B10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Nurse, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Falkowski and de Vargas, 2004; Nurse, 2003).

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

Two authors: (Falkowski and de Vargas, 2004)
Three or more authors: (Walther et al., 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	Acta Oecologica
Abbreviation	Acta Oecol. (Montrouge)
ISSN (print)	1146-609X
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Nature and Landscape Conservation