How to format your references using the Evolutionary Biology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Evolutionary Biology. 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
Foster, P. L. (2011). Comment on “A bacterium that can grow by using arsenic instead of phosphorus.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 332(6034), 1149; author reply 1149.
A journal article with 2 authors
Ting, A. Y., & Endy, D. (2002). Signal transduction. Decoding NF-kappaB signaling. Science (New York, N.Y.), 298(5596), 1189–1190.
A journal article with 3 authors
Ronshaugen, M., McGinnis, N., & McGinnis, W. (2002). Hox protein mutation and macroevolution of the insect body plan. Nature, 415(6874), 914–917.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Heikenwalder, M., Zeller, N., Seeger, H., Prinz, M., Klöhn, P.-C., Schwarz, P., et al. (2005). Chronic lymphocytic inflammation specifies the organ tropism of prions. Science (New York, N.Y.), 307(5712), 1107–1110.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Silvia, J. E. (2011). Dynamic Economic Decision Making. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Membrey, P. (2009). The Definitive Guide to CentOS. (T. Verhoeven & R. Angenendt, Eds.). Berkeley, CA: Apress.
A chapter in an edited book
Kouřimská, H., Skuppin, L., & Springborn, B. (2016). A Variational Principle for Cyclic Polygons with Prescribed Edge Lengths. In A. I. Bobenko (Ed.), Advances in Discrete Differential Geometry (pp. 177–195). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

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 Evolutionary Biology.

Blog post
Andrew, E. (2015, June 4). Climate Meme Debunked As The ‘Tropospheric Hot Spot’ Is Found. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/climate-meme-debunked-tropospheric-hot-spot-found/. Accessed 30 October 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. (2005). Activities of the Amtrak Inspector General (No. GAO-05-306R). 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
Ramakrishnan, L. (2009). Multi-level adaptation for performability in dynamic web service workflows (Doctoral dissertation). Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.

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
Crow, K. (2002, November 3). A Prickly Mason-Dixon Line in the Village. New York Times, p. 146.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Foster 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Foster 2011; Ting and Endy 2002).

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

  • Two authors: (Ting and Endy 2002)
  • Three or more authors: (Heikenwalder et al. 2005)

About the journal

Full journal titleEvolutionary Biology
AbbreviationEvol. Biol.
ISSN (print)0071-3260
ISSN (online)1934-2845
ScopeEcology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

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