How to format your references using the Herpetologica citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Herpetologica. 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.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
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
Archibald, J.M. 2009. Genomics. Green evolution, green revolution. Science 324:191–192.
A journal article with 2 authors
Fields, S., and M. Johnston. 2002. Genomics. A crisis in postgenomic nomenclature. Science 296:671–672.
A journal article with 3 authors
Lackner, L.L., J.S. Horner, and J. Nunnari. 2009. Mechanistic analysis of a dynamin effector. Science 325:874–877.
A journal article with 10 or more authors
Garant, D., L.E.B. Kruuk, T.A. Wilkin, R.H. McCleery, and B.C. Sheldon. 2005. Evolution driven by differential dispersal within a wild bird population. Nature 433:60–65.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Morri, G., and A. Mazza. 2014. Property Finance. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.
An edited book
Bauer, E., and M. Sigrist (eds.). 2012. Non-Centrosymmetric Superconductors: Introduction and Overview. 847. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. XI, 357 p. 151 illus pp.
A chapter in an edited book
Nicola, F., and L. Rodino. 2010. G-Pseudo-Differential Operators. Pp. 129–151 in Global Pseudo-Differential Calculus on Euclidean Spaces (L. Rodino, ed.). Birkhäuser, Basel.

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 Herpetologica.

Blog post
Andrew, E. 2015. Stephen Hawking Claims Aggression Will Be Downfall of Human Race. IFLScience.

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. 2009. High Speed Passenger Rail: Future Development Will Depend on Addressing Financial and Other Challenges and Establishing a Clear Federal Role. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation
Johnson, K.C. 2013. Teacher and parent perceptions of classroom experiences of African American male students in a high school alternative program. Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA.

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
Greenhouse, L. 2005. Justices Reject Appeal in Tobacco Case. New York Times A18.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Archibald 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Archibald 2009; Fields and Johnston 2002).

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

  • Two authors: (Fields and Johnston 2002)
  • Three or more authors: (Garant et al. 2005)

About the journal

Full journal titleHerpetologica
AbbreviationHerpetologica
ISSN (print)0018-0831
ISSN (online)1938-5099
ScopeAnimal Science and Zoology
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

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