How to format your references using the Conservation Biology citation style

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

Cardinale B. 2012. Ecology. Impacts of biodiversity loss. Science (New York, N.Y.) 336:552–553.

A journal article with 2 authors

Li W, Chetelat RT. 2010. A pollen factor linking inter- and intraspecific pollen rejection in tomato. Science (New York, N.Y.) 330:1827–1830.

A journal article with 3 authors

Shipley B, Vile D, Garnier E. 2006. From plant traits to plant communities: a statistical mechanistic approach to biodiversity. Science (New York, N.Y.) 314:812–814.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Kapitein LC, Peterman EJG, Kwok BH, Kim JH, Kapoor TM, Schmidt CF. 2005. The bipolar mitotic kinesin Eg5 moves on both microtubules that it crosslinks. Nature 435:114–118.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Akivis MA, Goldberg VV. 1996. Conformal Differential Geometry and Its Generalizations. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Wu Y, editor. 2011. Computing and Intelligent Systems: International Conference, ICCIC 2011, Wuhan, China, September 17-18, 2011. Proceedings, Part IV. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Germain L, Laflamme K, Auger FA. 2005. Tissue-Engineered Blood Vessels and the Future of Tissue Substitutes. Pages 85–97 in Nedović V, Willaert R, editors. Applications of Cell Immobilisation Biotechnology. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.

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 Conservation Biology.

Blog post

Luntz S. 2014, October 29. Huge “Bathtub Ring” Left By Oil Spill. IFLScience. Available from https://www.iflscience.com/environment/huge-bathtub-ring-left-oil-spill/ (accessed October 30, 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

Government Accountability Office. 1985. Weather Satellite Costs Have Increased: Problems Have Occurred in Their Manufacturing Quality Control. RCED-86-28. 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

Zitko JA. 2012. Effects of Random Cross-Sectioned Distributions, Fiber Misalignment and Interphases in Three-Dimensional Composite Models on Transverse Shear Modulus. Doctoral dissertation. University of South Florida, Tampa, FL.

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

Kelly D. 1990, March 11. STEAL THIS REVIEW. New York Times:719.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Cardinale 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Li & Chetelat 2010; Cardinale 2012).

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

Two authors: (Li & Chetelat 2010)
Three or more authors: (Kapitein et al. 2005)

About the journal

Full journal title	Conservation Biology
Abbreviation	Conserv. Biol.
ISSN (print)	0888-8892
ISSN (online)	1523-1739
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Ecology Nature and Landscape Conservation