How to format your references using the Ecological Research citation style

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

Dominissini D (2014) Genomics and Proteomics. Roadmap to the epitranscriptome. Science 346:1192

A journal article with 2 authors

Cowman AF, Tonkin CJ (2011) Microbiology. A tail of division. Science 331:409–410

A journal article with 3 authors

Ferain I, Colinge CA, Colinge J-P (2011) Multigate transistors as the future of classical metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors. Nature 479:310–316

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Mao WL, Mao H-K, Sturhahn W, et al (2006) Iron-rich post-perovskite and the origin of ultralow-velocity zones. Science 312:564–565

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Woo J-H, Sohn J-H, Nam B-G, Yoo H-J (2010) Mobile 3D Graphics SoC. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Andresen K, Steen B van der (eds) (2016) A European Youth Revolt: European Perspectives on Youth Protest and Social Movements in the 1980s. Palgrave Macmillan UK, London

A chapter in an edited book

Ang S-L (2009) Foxa1 and Foxa2 Transcription Factors Regulate Differentiation of Midbrain Dopaminergic Neurons. In: Pasterkamp RJ, Smidt MP, Burbach JPH (eds) Development and Engineering of Dopamine Neurons. Springer, New York, NY, pp 58–65

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 Research.

Blog post

Andrew E (2016) How’s Your Walnut, Mate? Why Men Don’t Like To Talk About Their Enlarged Prostate. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/how-s-your-walnut-mate-why-men-don-t-talk-about-their-enlarged-prostate/. 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 (2014) DOD Education Benefits: Action Is Needed to Ensure Evaluations of Postsecondary Schools Are Useful. 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

Dickens JR (2011) The experience of recovery from alcohol/drugs (AOD). Doctoral dissertation, Capella University

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

Barron J (2016) Leading a Paper’s Shift as Journalism Evolves. New York Times B1

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Dominissini 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Cowman and Tonkin 2011; Dominissini 2014).

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

Two authors: (Cowman and Tonkin 2011)
Three or more authors: (Mao et al. 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	Ecological Research
Abbreviation	Ecol. Res.
ISSN (print)	0912-3814
ISSN (online)	1440-1703
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

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