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

Smaglik, P. 2004. Home and away. Nature 432:127.

A journal article with 2 authors

Araújo, M. B., and C. Rahbek. 2006. Ecology. How does climate change affect biodiversity? Science (New York, N.Y.) 313:1396–1397.

A journal article with 3 authors

Selje, N., M. Simon, and T. Brinkhoff. 2004. A newly discovered Roseobacter cluster in temperate and polar oceans. Nature 427:445–448.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Stuart, S. N., J. S. Chanson, N. A. Cox, B. E. Young, A. S. L. Rodrigues, D. L. Fischman, and R. W. Waller. 2004. Status and trends of amphibian declines and extinctions worldwide. Science (New York, N.Y.) 306:1783–1786.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Cicek, V., and B. Al-Numan. 2011. Corrosion Chemistry. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Lee, H. 2012. Beginning Windows Phone App Development. Page (E. Chuvyrov, Ed.). Apress, Berkeley, CA.

A chapter in an edited book

Green, T. R. 2016. Linking Climate Change and Groundwater. Pages 97–141 in A. J. Jakeman, O. Barreteau, R. J. Hunt, J.-D. Rinaudo, and A. Ross, editors. Integrated Groundwater Management: Concepts, Approaches and Challenges. 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

Taub, B. 2016, October 14. Spiders Can Hear You From Several Meters Away – Even Without Any Ears. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/spiders-can-hear-you-several-meters-away-even-without-any-ears/.

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. Aviation Services: Automation and Consolidation of Flight Service Stations. 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

Lee, S. 2013. Control-display alignment modulates dimensional salience. 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

Greenhouse, L. 2007, July 3. Clues to the New Dynamic on the Supreme Court. New York Times:A11.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Smaglik 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Smaglik 2004, Araújo and Rahbek 2006).

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

Two authors: (Araújo and Rahbek 2006)
Three or more authors: (Stuart et al. 2004)

About the journal

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

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