How to format your references using the BMC Ecology citation style

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

1. Loder N. Director of Wellcome centre resigns over damning report. Nature. 2000;404:696.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Rubenstein DR, Lovette IJ. Reproductive skew and selection on female ornamentation in social species. Nature. 2009;462:786–9.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Huang X, Xu Y, Karato S-I. Water content in the transition zone from electrical conductivity of wadsleyite and ringwoodite. Nature. 2005;434:746–9.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Castellino F, Huang AY, Altan-Bonnet G, Stoll S, Scheinecker C, Germain RN. Chemokines enhance immunity by guiding naive CD8+ T cells to sites of CD4+ T cell-dendritic cell interaction. Nature. 2006;440:890–5.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Estampe D. Supply Chain Performance and Evaluation Models. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2014.

An edited book

1. Porcu E, Montero J, Schlather M, editors. Advances and Challenges in Space-time Modelling of Natural Events. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Brewer J, Richman F. Subrings of zero-dimensional rings. In: Brewer JW, Glaz S, Heinzer WJ, Olberding BM, editors. Multiplicative Ideal Theory in Commutative Algebra: A Tribute to the Work of Robert Gilmer. Boston, MA: Springer US; 2006. p. 73–88.

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 BMC Ecology.

Blog post

1. Taub B. New Study Reveals How Cannabis Interferes With The Development Of Brain Connections. IFLScience. 2016. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/new-study-reveals-cannabis-interferes-development-brain-connections/. 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

1. Government Accountability Office. Metropolitan Area Acquisition (MAA) Implementation Issues. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2001.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. French DC. A Case against E-Waste: Where One Country’s Trash is (Not) Another Country’s Treasure: Developing National E-Waste Legislation to Regulate E-Waste Exportation. Doctoral dissertation. George Washington University; 2012.

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

1. Schwartz J, Blinder A. Houston Faces Urgent Task: Moving Mountains of Storm Debris. New York Times. 2017;:A13.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1, 2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	BMC Ecology
Abbreviation	BMC Ecol.
ISSN (online)	1472-6785
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics General Environmental Science

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