How to format your references using the Ecology and Society citation style

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

Janin, J. 2008. Biochemistry. Dicey assemblies. Science (New York, N.Y.) 319(5860):165–166.

A journal article with 2 authors

Mashburn, L. M., and M. Whiteley. 2005. Membrane vesicles traffic signals and facilitate group activities in a prokaryote. Nature 437(7057):422–425.

A journal article with 3 authors

Zhang, W., J. A. Dunkle, and J. H. D. Cate. 2009. Structures of the ribosome in intermediate states of ratcheting. Science (New York, N.Y.) 325(5943):1014–1017.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Crompvoets, F. M., H. L. Bethlem, R. T. Jongma, and G. Meijer. 2001. A prototype storage ring for neutral molecules. Nature 411(6834):174–176.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Anderson, J. C., and F. Naeim. 2012. Basic Structural Dynamics. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Zhang, J., L. Shao, L. Zhang, and G. A. Jones, editors. 2010. Intelligent Video Event Analysis and Understanding. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Karakitsiou, A. 2013. Competitive Multilevel Capacity Allocation. Pages 71–89 in A. Migdalas, A. Sifaleras, C. K. Georgiadis, J. Papathanasiou, and E. Stiakakis, editors. Optimization Theory, Decision Making, and Operations Research Applications: Proceedings of the 1st International Symposium and 10th Balkan Conference on Operational Research. Springer, New York, NY.

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 Ecology and Society.

Blog post

Taub, B. 2016, December 19. Horses Ask People For Help When They’re Stuck. 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. 2004. Aviation Safety: Better Management Controls are Needed to Improve FAA’s Safety Enforcement and Compliance Efforts. 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

Komatsuzaki, T. 2012. Borrowing constraints and the business cycle in emerging markets. Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD.

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

Mann, M. 2015, April 18. The Other Side of Boredom. New York Times:SR6.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Janin 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Mashburn and Whiteley 2005, Janin 2008).

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

Two authors: (Mashburn and Whiteley 2005)
Three or more authors: (Crompvoets et al. 2001)

About the journal

Full journal title	Ecology and Society
Abbreviation	Conserv. Ecol.
ISSN (print)	1195-5449
Scope	Nature and Landscape Conservation