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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. 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	Download the output style file
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

Kargel JS. 2004. Planetary science. Proof for water, hints of life? Science 306: 1689–91.

A journal article with 2 authors

Apps R and Carrington M. 2013. Response to Comment on “Influence of HLA-C expression level on HIV control.” Science 341: 1175.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ekström G, Nettles M, and Tsai VC. 2006. Seasonality and increasing frequency of Greenland glacial earthquakes. Science 311: 1756–8.

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Xiao Y, Zhang T, Liu C, et al. 2014. Mis-splicing of the ABCC2 gene linked with Bt toxin resistance in Helicoverpa armigera. Sci Rep 4: 6184.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Katsilambros N, Diakoumopoulou E, Ioannidis I, et al. 2006. Diabetes in Clinical Practice. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

McGarry R and Walklate S (Eds). 2016. The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and War. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.

A chapter in an edited book

Williams JS and Wong-Leung J. 2010. Voids and Nanocavities in Silicon. In: Bernas H (Ed). Materials Science with Ion Beams. 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 Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

Blog post

Carpineti A. 2016. Go On A Spectacular Infrared Tour Of The Milky Way In This Video. https://www.iflscience.com/space/go-spectacular-tour-milky-way-infrared/. Viewed 30 Oct 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. 1999. Space Station: Status of Efforts to Determine Commercial Potential. 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

Johnston JS. 2017. Echo in Three Acts: The Lost Historical Subject in (Dis)articulation (Doctoral dissertation). Washington, DC: George Washington University.

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

Dinardo K. 2014. Kevin Carr Will Stop Running When He Circles the World. New York Times TR3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Kargel 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Kargel 2004; Apps and Carrington 2013).

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

Two authors: (Apps and Carrington 2013)
Three or more authors: (Xiao et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment
Abbreviation	Front. Ecol. Environ.
ISSN (print)	1540-9295
ISSN (online)	1540-9309
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Ecology