How to format your references using the Conservation Letters citation style

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

Spurgeon, D. (2000). Immigrants help offset Canada’s brain-drain crisis. Nature, 405, 604.

A journal article with 2 authors

Doulatov, S. & Daley, G.Q. (2013). Development. A stem cell perspective on cellular engineering. Science, 342, 700–702.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kusano, K., Johnson-Schlitz, D.M. & Engels, W.R. (2001). Sterility of Drosophila with mutations in the Bloom syndrome gene--complementation by Ku70. Science, 291, 2600–2602.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Higuchi, M., Maas, S., Single, F.N., Hartner, J., Rozov, A., Burnashev, N., Feldmeyer, D., Sprengel, R. & Seeburg, P.H. (2000). Point mutation in an AMPA receptor gene rescues lethality in mice deficient in the RNA-editing enzyme ADAR2. Nature, 406, 78–81.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Alsop, A. (2013). Continuing Professional Development in Health and Social Care. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Hoboken, NJ USA.

An edited book

Parsons, A.J. & Abrahams, A.D. (eds.). (2009). Geomorphology of Desert Environments. 2nd edn. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.

A chapter in an edited book

Daithankar, J. & Pandit, T. (2014). SAP TM : Overview, Architecture, Road Map. In: Transportation Management with SAP TM 9.0: A Hands-On Guide to Configuring, Implementing, and Optimizing SAP TM (ed. Pandit, T.). Apress, Berkeley, CA, pp. 19–30.

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 Letters.

Blog post

O`Callaghan, J. (2015). Low-Fat Diets Could Be Better For Weight Loss Than Cutting Carbs [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/low-fat-diets-could-be-better-weight-loss-cutting-carbs/

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. (2009). Surface Transportation: Efforts to Address Highway Congestion through Real-Time Traffic Information Systems Are Expanding but Face Implementation Challenges ( No. GAO-10-121R). 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

Hitchings, J.D. (2008). Teachers’ perceptions of evidence-based decision making: A case study of three schools in British Columbia (Doctoral dissertation).

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

Sisario, B. (2017). Harry Styles Tops Billboard Chart. New York Times, C3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Spurgeon 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Spurgeon 2000; Doulatov & Daley 2013).

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

Two authors: (Doulatov & Daley 2013)
Three or more authors: (Higuchi et al. 2000)

About the journal

Full journal title	Conservation Letters
Abbreviation	Conserv. Lett.
ISSN (online)	1755-263X
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Ecology Nature and Landscape Conservation