How to format your references using the Diversity and Distributions citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Diversity and Distributions. 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
Schulz, E. (2015). Organic chemistry: One catalyst, two reactions. Nature, 517(7534), 280–281.
A journal article with 2 authors
Poulet, J. F. A., & Petersen, C. C. H. (2008). Internal brain state regulates membrane potential synchrony in barrel cortex of behaving mice. Nature, 454(7206), 881–885.
A journal article with 3 authors
Gómez, J. M., Verdú, M., & Perfectti, F. (2010). Ecological interactions are evolutionarily conserved across the entire tree of life. Nature, 465(7300), 918–921.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Christians, E., Davis, A. A., Thomas, S. D., & Benjamin, I. J. (2000). Maternal effect of Hsf1 on reproductive success. Nature, 407(6805), 693–694.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Smith, M. B. (2014). Compendium of Organic Synthetic Methods: Smith/Compendium. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Chuvieco, E. (Ed.). (2008). Earth Observation of Global Change: The Role of Satellite Remote Sensing in Monitoring the Global Environment. Springer Netherlands.
A chapter in an edited book
Zazunov, A., Egger, R., Yeyati, A. L., Hützen, R., & Braunecker, B. (2013). Transport Through a Coulomb Blockaded Majorana Nanowire. In R. Egger, D. Matrasulov, & K. Rakhimov (Eds.), Low-Dimensional Functional Materials (pp. 63–76). Springer Netherlands.

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 Diversity and Distributions.

Blog post
Luntz, S. (2014, August 12). Boy Gets Ears Made From His Ribs. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/boy-gets-ears-made-his-ribs/

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. (1979). Information on the Labor Department’s Skill Training Improvement Program (HRD-79-19). U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
Rutherford, J. (2010). What is old is new again: The role of discontinuity in nostalgia-related consumption [Doctoral dissertation]. Florida Atlantic University.

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
Robinson, L. (2017, July 4). The Beginning of the End. New York Times, BR11.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Schulz, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Poulet & Petersen, 2008; Schulz, 2015).

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

  • Two authors: (Poulet & Petersen, 2008)
  • Three authors: (Gómez et al., 2010)
  • 6 or more authors: (Christians et al., 2000)

About the journal

Full journal titleDiversity and Distributions
AbbreviationDivers. Distrib.
ISSN (print)1366-9516
ISSN (online)1472-4642
ScopeEcology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

Other styles