How to format your references using the Behavioral Ecology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Behavioral 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 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

Weeks ER. 2012. Materials science. Melting colloidal crystals from the inside out. Science. 338(6103):55–56.

A journal article with 2 authors

Peters DH, Bloom G. 2012. Developing world: Bring order to unregulated health markets. Nature. 487(7406):163–165.

A journal article with 3 authors

MacMicking JD, Taylor GA, McKinney JD. 2003. Immune control of tuberculosis by IFN-gamma-inducible LRG-47. Science. 302(5645):654–659.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Rim YA, Yi H, Kim Y, Park N, Jung H, Kim J, Jung SM, Park S-H, Ju JH. 2014. Self in vivo production of a synthetic biological drug CTLA4Ig using a minicircle vector. Sci Rep. 4:6935.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Zonnenshain A, Stauber S. 2015. Managing and Engineering Complex Technological Systems. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Kock N, editor. 2010. Evolutionary Psychology and Information Systems Research: A New Approach to Studying the Effects of Modern Technologies on Human Behavior. Boston, MA: Springer US (Integrated Series in Information Systems).

A chapter in an edited book

Schär MO, Rodeo SA. 2014. Biology of Injury and Repair of Soft Tissues of the Shoulder. In: Milano G, Grasso A, editors. Shoulder Arthroscopy: Principles and Practice. London: Springer. p. 59–72.

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 Behavioral Ecology.

Blog post

Luntz S. 2016 Jul 1. Five Years After Fukushima, What Is It Really Doing To The Oceans? IFLScience. [accessed 2018 Oct 30]. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/five-years-after-fukushima-what-is-it-really-doing-to-the-oceans/.

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. 1979. Immigration and Naturalization Service Proposed Procurement of Automated Data Processing Equipment To Streamline and Update Office Procedures. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office Report No.: 109955.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Arnold DM. 2017. An Examination of Job Satisfaction Among Full-Time Faculty in a Selected Mississippi Community College [Doctoral dissertation]. [Mississippi State, MS]: Mississippi State 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

Leland J. 2017 Sep 8. ‘Weird Isn’t In Right Now.’ New York Times.:MB1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Weeks 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Peters and Bloom 2012; Weeks 2012).

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

Two authors: (Peters and Bloom 2012)
Three or more authors: (Rim et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Behavioral Ecology
Abbreviation	Behav. Ecol.
ISSN (print)	1045-2249
ISSN (online)	1465-7279
Scope	Animal Science and Zoology Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics