How to format your references using the Basic and Applied Ecology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Basic and Applied Ecology. 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Hanson, B. (2009). Light on the origin of man. Ardipithecus ramidus. Introduction. Science (New York, N.Y.), 326(5949), 60–61.

A journal article with 2 authors

Begun, D. R., & Ward, C. V. (2005). Comment on “Pierolapithecus catalaunicus, a new Middle Miocene great ape from Spain.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 308(5719), 203; author reply 203.

A journal article with 3 authors

Stevens, R. C., Yokoyama, S., & Wilson, I. A. (2001). Global efforts in structural genomics. Science (New York, N.Y.), 294(5540), 89–92.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Schaller, E. L., Roe, H. G., Schneider, T., & Brown, M. E. (2009). Storms in the tropics of Titan. Nature, 460(7257), 873–875.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Greiman, V. A. (2013). Megaproject Management. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Cagle, P. T. (2010). Frozen Section Library: Pleura (T. C. Allen, Ed.; Vol. 3). Springer US.

A chapter in an edited book

van den Bosch, D. D., van der Seijs, M. V., & de Klerk, D. (2014). Validation of Blocked-Force Transfer Path Analysis with Compensation for Test Bench Dynamics. In M. Allen, R. Mayes, & D. Rixen (Eds.), Dynamics of Coupled Structures, Volume 1: Proceedings of the 32nd IMAC, A Conference and Exposition on Structural Dynamics, 2014 (pp. 37–49). Springer International Publishing.

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 Basic and Applied Ecology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015, March 7). Researchers Image What They Believe To Be Smallest Life Possible. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/researchers-image-what-they-believe-be-smallest-life-possible/

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. (1995). Information Technology: A Statistical Study of Acquisition Time (AIMD-95-65). U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Ghafoori, H. D. (2010). Working with Muslim children and families: A training program for child welfare social workers [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

Vecsey, G. (2010, April 6). Fans Voice Frustration, But Mets Leave It Behind. New York Times, B15.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Hanson, 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Begun & Ward, 2005; Hanson, 2009).

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

Two authors: (Begun & Ward, 2005)
Three or more authors: (Schaller et al., 2009)

About the journal

Full journal title	Basic and Applied Ecology
Abbreviation	Basic Appl. Ecol.
ISSN (print)	1439-1791
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics