How to format your references using the Acta Ornithologica citation style

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

McLean A. R. 2013. Epidemiology. Coming to an airport near you. Science 342: 1330–1331.

A journal article with 2 authors

Silk J., Chluba J. 2014. Astronomy. Next steps for cosmology. Science 344: 586–588.

A journal article with 3 authors

Herrmann B., Thöni C., Gächter S. 2008. Antisocial punishment across societies. Science 319: 1362–1367.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Perets H. B., Gal-Yam A., Mazzali P. A., Arnett D., Kagan D., Filippenko A. V., Li W., Arcavi I., Cenko S. B., Fox D. B., Leonard D. C., Moon D.-S., Sand D. J., Soderberg A. M., Anderson J. P., James P. A., Foley R. J., Ganeshalingam M., Ofek E. O., Bildsten L., Nelemans G., Shen K. J., Weinberg N. N., Metzger B. D., Piro A. L., Quataert E., Kiewe M., Poznanski D. 2010. A faint type of supernova from a white dwarf with a helium-rich companion. Nature 465: 322–325.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Scheinfeld R. 2009. Busting Loose from the Business Game. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Burton W. B., Kuijpers J. M. E., Heuvel E. P. J. V. D., Laan H. V. D., Appenzeller I., Bahcall J. N., Bertola F., Cassinelli J. P., Cesarsky C. J., Engvold O., McCray R., Murdin P. G., Pacini F., Radhakrishnan V., Sato K., Shu F. H., Somov B. V., Sunyaev R. A., Tanaka Y., Tremaine S., Weiss N. O., Sharma A. S., Kaw P. K. (eds). 2005. Nonequilibrium Phenomena in Plasmas. Vol. 321. Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Dahlgren T. G., Schläppy M.-L., Šaškov A., Andersson M. H., Rzhanov Y., Fer I. 2014. Assessing the Impact of Windfarms in Subtidal, Exposed Marine Areas. In: Shields M. A., Payne A. I. L. (eds). Marine Renewable Energy Technology and Environmental Interactions. Springer Netherlands, pp. 39–48.

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 Ornithologica.

Blog post

Hale T. 2016. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/technology/huge-ancient-hidden-monument-found-in-petra-using-satellites-drones-and-google-earth/.

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. 2017. Public-Safety Broadband Network: FirstNet Has Made Progress Establishing the Network, but Should Address Stakeholder Concerns and Workforce Planning.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Martinez Abadia J. M. 2014. French for Spanish speakers: A contrastive study of English monolingual, bilingual, and plurilingual adult learners of French. California State University, Long Beach, . Long Beach, CA.

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

Weiser B., Schwirtz M. 2017. Prison Guards Will Not Be Charged in an Inmate’s Death in 2015, Prosecutors Say. New York Times A15.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (McLean, 2013).
This sentence cites two references (McLean, 2013; Silk & Chluba, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Silk & Chluba, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Perets et al., 2010)

About the journal

Full journal title	Acta Ornithologica
ISSN (print)	0001-6454
ISSN (online)	1734-8471
Scope