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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Patenaude G. 2010. Climate class for business schools. Nature 466:30.
A journal article with 2 authors
Kingston T, Rossiter SJ. 2004. Harmonic-hopping in Wallacea’s bats. Nature 429:654–7.
A journal article with 3 authors
Kumada N, Muraki K, Hirayama Y. 2006. Low-frequency spin dynamics in a canted antiferromagnet. Science 313:329–32.
A journal article with 99 or more authors
Atkinson PJ, Wise AK, Flynn BO, Nayagam BA, Richardson RT. 2014. Viability of long-term gene therapy in the cochlea. Sci Rep 4:4733.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Seagal ZM, Surnina OM. 2016. Ultrasonic Topographical and Pathotopographical Anatomy. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley &;#38; Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Rauf A. 2012. Microwave-Induced Synthesis of Aromatic Heterocycles. (Farshori NN, editor.). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands
A chapter in an edited book
dell’Isola F, Andreaus U, Placidi L. 2014. A Still Topical Contribution of Gabrio Piola to Continuum Mechanics: The Creation of Peri-dynamics, Non-local and Higher Gradient Continuum Mechanics. In: dell’Isola F, Maier G, Perego U, Andreaus U, Esposito R, Forest S, editors. The complete works of Gabrio Piola: Volume I: Commented English Translation. Advanced Structured Materials. Cham: Springer International Publishing. pp 696–750.

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
Andrew E. 2015. Why Does New York Have The Best Bagels? IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/what-does-new-york-have-best-bagels/. 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. 1987. [Comments on Applicability of Grant-Back Provision of General Education Provisions Act to Library Services and Construction Act Programs]. 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
Cao L. 2017. Mathematical Modeling of Long-Term Productivity of Hydraulic- and HEG- Fractured Wells in Ultra-Low Permeability Reservoirs.

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
Greenhouse L. 2006. Justices Express Concern Over Aspects of Some Texas Redistricting. 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 (Patenaude 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Kingston and Rossiter 2004; Patenaude 2010).

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

  • Two authors: (Kingston and Rossiter 2004)
  • Three or more authors: (Atkinson and others 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleEcosystems
AbbreviationEcosystems
ISSN (print)1432-9840
ISSN (online)1435-0629
ScopeEcology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Ecology
Environmental Chemistry

Other styles