How to format your references using the Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution citation style

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

Harris, H. (2004). Tumour suppression: putting on the brakes. Nature 427, 201.

A journal article with 2 authors

Rohrbach, A., and Schmidt, M. W. (2011). Redox freezing and melting in the Earth’s deep mantle resulting from carbon-iron redox coupling. Nature 472, 209–212.

A journal article with 3 authors

Rood, R. T., Bania, T. M., and Balser, D. S. (2002). Cosmology. The saga of 3He. Science 295, 804–805.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Zhu, Y., Zhuang, J., Ge, X., Zhang, X., Wang, Z., Sun, J., et al. (2013). Identifcation of a novel mutation p.I240T in the FRMD7 gene in a family with congenital nystagmus. Sci. Rep. 3, 3084.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kurrer, K.-E. (2016). Geschichte der Baustatik. Berlin, Germany: Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn, Verlag für Architektur und technische Wissenschaften GmbH & Co. KG.

An edited book

Wrycza, S. ed. (2015). Information Systems: Development, Applications, Education: 8th SIGSAND/PLAIS EuroSymposium 2015, Gdansk, Poland, September 25, 2015, Proceedings. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Banerjee, S., Gerlitz, J.-Y., and Kniveton, D. (2013). “A Methodology for Assessing Patterns of Labour Migration in Mountain Communities Exposed to Water Hazards,” in Disentangling Migration and Climate Change: Methodologies, Political Discourses and Human Rights, eds. T. Faist and J. Schade (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands), 81–100.

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 Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2013). Video shows fire ants are capable of acting like a liquid and a solid. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/video-shows-fire-ants-are-capable-acting-liquid-and-solid/ (Accessed October 30, 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 (1998). Land Management Systems: Actions Needed in Completing the Automated Land and Mineral Record System Development. 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

Reimer, E. L. (2010). Grant proposal: Support services for families of children diagnosed with autism. Long Beach, CA: California State University, Long Beach.

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

McKINLEY, J. C., Jr (2017). State Senators Confirm First Openly Gay Judge For New York’s Top Court. New York Times, A22.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Harris, 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Harris, 2004; Rohrbach and Schmidt, 2011).

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

Two authors: (Rohrbach and Schmidt, 2011)
Three or more authors: (Zhu et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution
Abbreviation	Front. Ecol. Evol.
ISSN (online)	2296-701X
Scope