How to format your references using the Ecological Informatics citation style

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

French, C., 2010. Archaeology. People, societies, and landscapes. Science 328, 443–444.

A journal article with 2 authors

Frank, J., Agrawal, R.K., 2000. A ratchet-like inter-subunit reorganization of the ribosome during translocation. Nature 406, 318–322.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ramer, M.S., Priestley, J.V., McMahon, S.B., 2000. Functional regeneration of sensory axons into the adult spinal cord. Nature 403, 312–316.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Wu, Y.S., Yu, G.L., Li, R.H., Song, L.R., Jiang, H.X., Riding, R., Liu, L.J., Liu, D.Y., Zhao, R., 2014. Cyanobacterial fossils from 252 Ma old microbialites and their environmental significance. Sci. Rep. 4, 3820.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Casandjian, C., Challamel, N., Lanos, C., Hellesland, J., 2013. Reinforced Concrete Beams, Columns and Frames. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ 07030 USA.

An edited book

Atluri, V., Diaz, C. (Eds.), 2011. Computer Security – ESORICS 2011: 16th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security, Leuven, Belgium, September 12-14,2011. Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Thorne, C., Griffiths, C., 2014. Smart, Smarter, Smartest: Redefining Our Cities, in: Dameri, R.P., Rosenthal-Sabroux, C. (Eds.), Smart City: How to Create Public and Economic Value with High Technology in Urban Space, Progress in IS. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 89–99.

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 Informatics.

Blog post

Andrew, E., 2014. Water Vapour Discovered In The Atmosphere Of Neptune-Sized Exoplanet [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/space/neptune-sized-exoplanet-has-clear-skies-and-water-vapor-atmosphere/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 2015. Public-Safety Broadband Network: FirstNet Should Strengthen Internal Controls and Evaluate Lessons Learned (No. GAO-15-407). 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

Hayes, U.T., 2014. Mental health services for foster youth: A grant proposal (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

Kishkovsky, S., 2004. Russian Lawmakers Advance Counterterrorism Measures. New York Times A10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (French, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Frank and Agrawal, 2000; French, 2010).

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

Two authors: (Frank and Agrawal, 2000)
Three or more authors: (Wu et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Ecological Informatics
Abbreviation	Ecol. Inform.
ISSN (print)	1574-9541
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Computational Theory and Mathematics Computer Science Applications Ecological Modelling Ecology Applied Mathematics Modelling and Simulation