How to format your references using the Ecological Processes citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Ecological Processes. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Baker DN (2012) NASA: Let academia lead space science. Nature 488:27–28

A journal article with 2 authors

Baker AW, Forest KT (2014) Structural biology: Action at a distance in a light receptor. Nature 509:174–175

A journal article with 3 authors

Topper TP, Holmer LE, Caron J-B (2014) Brachiopods hitching a ride: an early case of commensalism in the middle Cambrian Burgess Shale. Sci Rep 4:6704

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Clark PU, McCabe AM, Mix AC, Weaver AJ (2004) Rapid rise of sea level 19,000 years ago and its global implications. Science 304:1141–1144

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Taroni F, Biedermann A, Bozza S, et al (2014) Bayesian Networks for Probabilistic Inference and Decision Analysis in Forensic Science. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Marcal PV, Yamagata N (eds) (2016) Design and Analysis of Reinforced Fiber Composites, 1st ed. 2016. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Lin CY-Y, Edvinsson L, Chen J, Beding T (2013) Beyond the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. In: Edvinsson L, Chen J, Beding T (eds) National Intellectual Capital and the Financial Crisis in Brazil, Russia, India, China, Korea, and South Africa. Springer, New York, NY, pp 63–70

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 Processes.

Blog post

Andrew E (2015) Scientists Discover Brain Network That Distinguishes Novelty From Familiarity. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/scientists-discover-brain-network-distinguishes-novelty-familiarity/. Accessed 30 Oct 2018

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 (2009) District of Columbia Public Schools: Important Steps Taken to Continue Reform Efforts, But Enhanced Planning Could Improve Implementation and Sustainability. 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

Chavez G (2017) Creating Integrated, Inquiry Science Lessons Based on Early Childhood Science Activities. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

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

Ahmed A, Nunez P, Blinder A (2016) From Haiti to Florida, a Hurricane’s Trail of Disaster and Near Misses. New York Times A24

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Baker 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Baker 2012; Baker and Forest 2014).

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

Two authors: (Baker and Forest 2014)
Three or more authors: (Clark et al. 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	Ecological Processes
Abbreviation	Ecol. Process.
ISSN (online)	2192-1709
Scope