How to format your references using the Ecological Applications citation style

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

Walker, R. J. 2000. Earth science. The extraterrestrial wedding ring. Nature 406:359–360.

A journal article with 2 authors

Dupuy, T. J., and A. L. Kraus. 2013. Distances, luminosities, and temperatures of the coldest known substellar objects. Science (New York, N.Y.) 341:1492–1495.

A journal article with 3 authors

Lisiecki, L. E., M. E. Raymo, and W. B. Curry. 2008. Atlantic overturning responses to Late Pleistocene climate forcings. Nature 456:85–88.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Budakian, R., H. J. Mamin, B. W. Chui, and D. Rugar. 2005. Creating order from random fluctuations in small spin ensembles. Science (New York, N.Y.) 307:408–411.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kent, J. 2017. ADA in Details. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Lőw, P. 2016. Atlas of Animal Anatomy and Histology. Page (K. Molnár and G. Kriska, Eds.). Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

Young, I. M. 2010. Responsibility and Global Labor Justice. Pages 53–76 in G. Ognjenovic, editor. Responsibility in Context: Perspectives. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.

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 Ecological Applications.

Blog post

Andrew, E. 2015, June 8. Heartwarming Footage Shows Two Captive Dolphins Being Returned To The Wild. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/watch-moment-two-captive-dolphins-are-returned-wild/.

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. 1988. Space Shuttle: Changes to the Solid Rocket Motor Contract. 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

Miller, T. 2014. A qualitative phenomenological study: Hiring nurses re-entering the workforce after chemical dependence. Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ.

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

Novick, S. M. 2015, November 22. Turkey and Trimmings, Without Dishes to Do. New York Times:LI11.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Walker 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Walker 2000, Dupuy and Kraus 2013).

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

Two authors: (Dupuy and Kraus 2013)
Three or more authors: (Budakian et al. 2005)

About the journal

Full journal title	Ecological Applications
Abbreviation	Ecol. Appl.
ISSN (print)	1051-0761
ISSN (online)	1939-5582
Scope	Ecology