How to format your references using the Ecosphere citation style

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

Hilton, D. 2015. Practical policies can combat gender inequality. Nature 523:7.

A journal article with 2 authors

Fitzgerald, K. A., and D. T. Golenbock. 2007. Immunology. The shape of things to come. Science (New York, N.Y.) 316:1574–1576.

A journal article with 3 authors

Gray-Schopfer, V., C. Wellbrock, and R. Marais. 2007. Melanoma biology and new targeted therapy. Nature 445:851–857.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Craig, C. M., D. Delay, M. A. Grealy, and D. N. Lee. 2000. Guiding the swing in golf putting. Nature 405:295–296.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ng, K. K. 2009. Complete Guide to Semiconductor Devices. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Højsgaard, S. 2012. Graphical Models with R. Page (D. Edwards and S. Lauritzen, Eds.). Springer US, Boston, MA.

A chapter in an edited book

Gustavsson, A., J. Gustafsson, and B. Lisper. 2014. Timing Analysis of Parallel Software Using Abstract Execution. Pages 59–77 in K. L. McMillan and X. Rival, editors. Verification, Model Checking, and Abstract Interpretation: 15th International Conference, VMCAI 2014, San Diego, CA, USA, January 19-21, 2014, Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

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 Ecosphere.

Blog post

Fang, J. 2015, June 3. Lack of Food Competition May Explain the Diversity of African Savanna Herbivores. 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. 1996. Telecommunications: Competitive Impact of Restructuring the International Satellite Organizations. 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

Dhantole, G. 2014. Evaluating provision of healthcare system in the U.S. 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

Strauss, B. 2017, February 1. N.L.R.B. Lawyer Affirms Athletes’ Rights. New York Times:B17.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Hilton 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Fitzgerald and Golenbock 2007, Hilton 2015).

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

Two authors: (Fitzgerald and Golenbock 2007)
Three or more authors: (Craig et al. 2000)

About the journal

Full journal title	Ecosphere
Abbreviation	Ecosphere
ISSN (online)	2150-8925
Scope