How to format your references using the Coral Reefs citation style

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

Lang T (2015) Ebola: Embed research in outbreak response. Nature 524:29–31

A journal article with 2 authors

Kalnay E, Cai M (2003) Impact of urbanization and land-use change on climate. Nature 423:528–531

A journal article with 3 authors

Ogawa Y, Sun BK, Lee JT (2008) Intersection of the RNA interference and X-inactivation pathways. Science 320:1336–1341

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Moritz C, Patton JL, Conroy CJ, Parra JL, White GC, Beissinger SR (2008) Impact of a century of climate change on small-mammal communities in Yosemite National Park, USA. Science 322:261–264

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Glisic S (2005) Advanced Wireless Communications. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Zwikael O (2011) Project Management for the Creation of Organisational Value. Springer, London

A chapter in an edited book

Anwar D, Ransom S, Weiner RS (2013) Communication in Palliative Care. In: Vadivelu N., Kaye A.D., Berger J.M. (eds) Essentials of Palliative Care. Springer, New York, NY, pp 73–87

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 Coral Reefs.

Blog post

Fang J (2015) New Tiniest Snail Smashes Month-Old World Record.

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 (1980) The Near-Term Potential of Manufacturing in Space.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Morgan AJ (2017) Analyzing Red and Gray Stages of Bark Beetle Attack in the San Bernardino National Forest Using Remote Sensing. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

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

Loomis G (2012) Opera of the Soul, Sparsely Staged. New York Times 0

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Lang 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Kalnay and Cai 2003; Lang 2015).

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

Two authors: (Kalnay and Cai 2003)
Three or more authors: (Moritz et al. 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	Coral Reefs
Abbreviation	Coral Reefs
ISSN (print)	0722-4028
ISSN (online)	1432-0975
Scope	Aquatic Science