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

Gaston, K. J. (2012). Ecology: the importance of being rare. Nature 487, 46–47.

A journal article with 2 authors

Lee, Y. K., and Mazmanian, S. K. (2010). Has the microbiota played a critical role in the evolution of the adaptive immune system? Science 330, 1768–1773.

A journal article with 3 authors

Schmidt, M. W., Spero, H. J., and Lea, D. W. (2004). Links between salinity variation in the Caribbean and North Atlantic thermohaline circulation. Nature 428, 160–163.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Pham, P., Bransteitter, R., Petruska, J., and Goodman, M. F. (2003). Processive AID-catalysed cytosine deamination on single-stranded DNA simulates somatic hypermutation. Nature 424, 103–107.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Zack, G. M. (2012). Financial Statement Fraud. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Mastorakis, N., Mladenov, V., and Kontargyri, V. T. eds. (2009). Proceedings of the European Computing Conference: Volume 1. Boston, MA: Springer US.

A chapter in an edited book

Whitman, G. J., and Kushwaha, A. C. (2008). “Mammography, Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Breast, and Radionuclide Imaging of the Breast,” in Breast Cancer 2nd edition, eds. K. K. Hunt, G. L. Robb, E. A. Strom, and N. T. Ueno (New York, NY: Springer), 83–120.

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. (2014). Invasion of the strange sailor jellyfish – what are they, and will they sting us? IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/invasion-strange-sailor-jellyfish-what-are-they-and-will-they-sting-us/ (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 (2014). Software Licenses: DOD’s Plan to Collect Inventory Data Meets Statutory Requirements. 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

Patra, P. (2009). Image scaling with three different interpolation techniques and their comparisons. 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

Cooper, M., and Walsh, M. W. (2013). Surpluses Help, But Fiscal Woes For States Go On. 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 (Gaston, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Lee and Mazmanian, 2010; Gaston, 2012).

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

Two authors: (Lee and Mazmanian, 2010)
Three or more authors: (Pham et al., 2003)

About the journal

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