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

Visvader, J.E. (2011). Cells of origin in cancer. Nature, 469, 314–322.

A journal article with 2 authors

Olsen, S.R. & Wilson, R.I. (2008). Lateral presynaptic inhibition mediates gain control in an olfactory circuit. Nature, 452, 956–960.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kurin-Csörgei, K., Epstein, I.R. & Orbán, M. (2005). Systematic design of chemical oscillators using complexation and precipitation equilibria. Nature, 433, 139–142.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Haug, G.H., Günther, D., Peterson, L.C., Sigman, D.M., Hughen, K.A. & Aeschlimann, B. (2003). Climate and the collapse of Maya civilization. Science, 299, 1731–1735.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kazimierczuk, M. (2013). High-Frequency Magnetic Components. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Nikulin, M. (2016). The Cox Model and Its Applications. SpringerBriefs in Statistics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Shin, I., Kim, M. & Choo, H. (2008). On Generating Backbone Trees through Robust Multi-hop Clusters in Wireless Sensor Networks. In: Computer-Human Interaction: 8th Asia-Pacific Conference, APCHI 2008 Seoul, Korea, July 6-9, 2008 Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science (eds. Lee, S., Choo, H., Ha, S. & Shin, I.C.). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 30–39.

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

Hale, T. (2016). Here’s What The Weather Does To Your Body [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/brain/how-and-why-weather-can-make-humans-behave-strangely/

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). Emergency Communications: Vulnerabilities Remain and Limited Collaboration and Monitoring Hamper Federal Efforts ( No. GAO-09-604). 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

Raines, J.R. (2010). Exploring differences in teacher attitudes and instructional strategies between traditional and block schedule high schools: A comparison of two large schools (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

Kenigsberg, B. (2017). Film Series. New York Times, C28.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Visvader 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Olsen & Wilson 2008; Visvader 2011).

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

Two authors: (Olsen & Wilson 2008)
Three or more authors: (Haug et al. 2003)

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

Research and Writing Guides