How to format your references using the Ecosystems citation style

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

Berthoud H-R. 2013. Medicine. Why does gastric bypass surgery work? Science 341:351–2.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kobayashi T, Hasui K. 2014. Efficient immunization strategies to prevent financial contagion. Sci Rep 4:3834.

A journal article with 3 authors

Melcák I, Hoelz A, Blobel G. 2007. Structure of Nup58/45 suggests flexible nuclear pore diameter by intermolecular sliding. Science 315:1729–32.

A journal article with 99 or more authors

Lang KM, Madhavan V, Hoffman JE, Hudson EW, Eisaki H, Uchida S, Davis JC. 2002. Imaging the granular structure of high-Tc superconductivity in underdoped Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+delta. Nature 415:412–6.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Yanni SB. 2015. Translational ADMET for Drug Therapy. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc

An edited book

Cuthbertson R. 2011. Sustainable Supply Chain Management: Practical Ideas for Moving Towards Best Practice. (Cetinkaya B, Ewer G, Klaas-Wissing T, Piotrowicz W, Tyssen C, editors.). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer

A chapter in an edited book

Hasselbalch J, Costa N, Blecken A. 2015. Investigating the Barriers to Sustainable Procurement in the United Nations. In: Klumpp M, Leeuw S de, Regattieri A, Souza R de, editors. Humanitarian Logistics and Sustainability. Lecture Notes in Logistics. Cham: Springer International Publishing. pp 67–86.

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 Ecosystems.

Blog post

Hale T. 2016. ‘Xenomorph Baby’ Pokes His Feet Out Through His Mom’s Uterus. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/xenomorph-baby-pokes-his-feet-out-through-his-moms-uterus/. Last accessed 30/10/2018

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. 1994. NASA Contract Management: Improving the Use of DCAA’s Auditing Services. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Gruhl DK. 2010. Santa Rosa Adopt-A-Grandparent Plus program: A grant proposal project.

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

Walsh MW. 2017. Ex-Insurer Says ‘Perfect Scheme’ Bilks Medicare. New York Times:A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Berthoud 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Berthoud 2013; Kobayashi and Hasui 2014).

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

Two authors: (Kobayashi and Hasui 2014)
Three or more authors: (Lang and others 2002)

About the journal

Full journal title	Ecosystems
Abbreviation	Ecosystems
ISSN (print)	1432-9840
ISSN (online)	1435-0629
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Ecology Environmental Chemistry