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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Aanen, D.K. (2014). Developmental Biology. How a long-lived fungus keeps mutations in check. Science, 346, 922–923.
A journal article with 2 authors
Tulin, A. & Spradling, A. (2003). Chromatin loosening by poly(ADP)-ribose polymerase (PARP) at Drosophila puff loci. Science, 299, 560–562.
A journal article with 3 authors
Burns, P.C., Ewing, R.C. & Navrotsky, A. (2012). Nuclear fuel in a reactor accident. Science, 335, 1184–1188.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Xu, M., Arulandu, A., Struck, D.K., Swanson, S., Sacchettini, J.C. & Young, R. (2005). Disulfide isomerization after membrane release of its SAR domain activates P1 lysozyme. Science, 307, 113–117.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Lam, J. (2014). Enterprise Risk Management. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.
An edited book
Abe, A., Lee, K.-S., Leibler, L. & Kobayashi, S. (eds.). (2013). Controlled Polymerization and Polymeric Structures: Flow Microreactor Polymerization, Micelles Kinetics, Polypeptide Ordering, Light Emitting Nanostructures. Advances in Polymer Science. Springer International Publishing, Cham.
A chapter in an edited book
Sheehan, W. & Conselice, C.J. (2015). Chimneys and Tubules of the Galaxy. In: Galactic Encounters: Our Majestic and Evolving Star-System, From the Big Bang to Time’s End (ed. Conselice, C.J.). Springer, New York, NY, pp. 54–78.

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
Andrew, E. (2015). How Your Body Knows When To Burn Fat [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/how-your-body-knows-when-burn-fat/

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. (1997). International Aviation: Competition Issues in the U.S.-U.K. Market ( No. T-RCED-97-103). 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
Powell, T.J. (2012). Saxophone sonatas: 1980–2010 (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
Fausset, R. (2016). Black Man’s Shooting Recalls Southern Wounds. New York Times, A10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Aanen 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Tulin & Spradling 2003; Aanen 2014).

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

  • Two authors: (Tulin & Spradling 2003)
  • Three or more authors: (Xu et al. 2005)

About the journal

Full journal titleConservation Letters
AbbreviationConserv. Lett.
ISSN (online)1755-263X
ScopeEcology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Ecology
Nature and Landscape Conservation

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