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

Spurgeon, D. 2000. Immigrants help offset Canada’s brain-drain crisis. Nature 405:604.

A journal article with 2 authors

y Arcas, B. A., and A. Fairhall. 2001. Archaeology of type. Nature 411:997.

A journal article with 3 authors

Schweitzer, M. H., J. L. Wittmeyer, and J. R. Horner. 2005. Gender-specific reproductive tissue in ratites and Tyrannosaurus rex. Science (New York, N.Y.) 308:1456–1460.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Dahlin, E., A. S. Neely, A. Larsson, L. Bäckman, and L. Nyberg. 2008. Transfer of learning after updating training mediated by the striatum. Science (New York, N.Y.) 320:1510–1512.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hammes, G. G. 2005. Spectroscopy for the Biological Sciences. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Carreiro, M. M., Y.-C. Song, and J. Wu, editors. 2008. Ecology, Planning, and Management of Urban Forests: International Perspectives. Springer, New York, NY.

A chapter in an edited book

Lun, Y. H. V., K.-H. Lai, C. W. Y. Wong, and T. C. E. Cheng. 2016. Development of a Green Shipping Network. Pages 61–76 in K.-H. Lai, C. W. Y. Wong, and T. C. E. Cheng, editors. Green Shipping Management. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

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

Andrews, R. 2017, June 8. North Korea Mocks America For Pulling Out Of Paris Agreement. IFLScience.

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. 1976. Legality of the Reported Use by the Energy Research and Development Administration of Certain Fossil Energy Funds for Contracts. 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

Encarnacion, M. 2014. Does the use of clickers while incorporating small groups discussion increase student learning in the chemistry classroom. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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, February 2. Film Series. New York Times:C24.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Spurgeon 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Spurgeon 2000, y Arcas and Fairhall 2001).

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

Two authors: (y Arcas and Fairhall 2001)
Three or more authors: (Dahlin et al. 2008)

About the journal

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