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 reference managers.
BibTeXBibTeX styles 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
Baker, M. (2010). Whole-animal imaging: Probe progress. Nature, 463(7283), 979.
A journal article with 2 authors
Ashworth, A. C., & Thompson, F. C. (2003). Palaeontology: A fly in the biogeographic ointment. Nature, 423(6936), 135–136.
A journal article with 3 authors
Hernlund, J. W., Thomas, C., & Tackley, P. J. (2005). A doubling of the post-perovskite phase boundary and structure of the Earth’s lowermost mantle. Nature, 434(7035), 882–886.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Heekeren, H. R., Marrett, S., Bandettini, P. A., & Ungerleider, L. G. (2004). A general mechanism for perceptual decision-making in the human brain. Nature, 431(7010), 859–862.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Alexander, M., & Walkenbach, J. (2012). 101 Ready-to-Use Excel® Macros. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Krogstie, J., Mouratidis, H., & Su, J. (Eds.). (2016). Advanced Information Systems Engineering Workshops: CAiSE 2016 International Workshops, Ljubljana, Slovenia, June 13-17, 2016, Proceedings (Vol. 249). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
A chapter in an edited book
Fornage, B. D., & Edeiken-Monroe, B. S. (2008). Breast Sonography. In K. K. Hunt, G. L. Robb, E. A. Strom, & N. T. Ueno (Eds.), Breast Cancer 2nd edition (pp. 121–161). New York, NY: 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, August 6). First Venomous Frogs Described Use Heads As Deadly Weapons. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/first-venomous-frogs-described-use-heads-deadly-weapons/. 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. (1978). BPA Management of ADP Systems Development Activities (No. B-115369). 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
Hart, M. M. (2013). R&D Characteristics and Organizational Structure: Case Studies of University-Industry Research Centers (Doctoral dissertation). George Washington University, Washington, DC.

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
Dorman, J. L. (2017, May 3). What Kal Penn Loves About Being in Toronto. New York Times, p. TR2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Baker 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Ashworth and Thompson 2003; Baker 2010).

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

  • Two authors: (Ashworth and Thompson 2003)
  • Three or more authors: (Heekeren et al. 2004)

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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