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
Piperno, D.R. 2001. Archaeology. On maize and the sunflower. Science 292:2260–2261.
A journal article with 2 authors
Lill, T., and O. Joubert. 2008. Materials science. The cutting edge of plasma etching. Science 319:1050–1051.
A journal article with 3 authors
Bacles, C.F.E., A.J. Lowe, and R.A. Ennos. 2006. Effective seed dispersal across a fragmented landscape. Science 311:628.
A journal article with 10 or more authors
Anderson, B.J., M.H. Acuña, H. Korth, M.E. Purucker, C.L. Johnson, J.A. Slavin, S.C. Solomon, and R.L. McNutt Jr. 2008. The structure of Mercury’s magnetic field from MESSENGER’s first flyby. Science 321:82–85.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Gros, D., and K. Lannoo. 2004. The Euro Capital Market. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.
An edited book
Perbal, A., M. Takigawa, and B. Perbal (eds.). 2010. CCN Proteins in Health and Disease: An Overview of the Fifth International Workshop on the CCN Family of Genes. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht. XIII, 338 p pp.
A chapter in an edited book
Lichte, P., and H.-C. Pape. 2014. The Multiply Injured Patient. Pp. 111–119 in Management of Musculoskeletal Injuries in the Trauma Patient (W.R. Smith and P.F. Stahel, eds.). Springer, New York, NY.

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
Andrews, R. 2016. Archaeologist Claims To Have Found Legendary Throne From Trojan War. IFLScience. Available at https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/archaeologist-claims-found-legendary-throne-trojan-war/.

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. 1994. Global Positioning Technology: Opportunities for Greater Federal Agency Joint Development and Use. 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
Friedlander, M.B. 2014. Limited Sight Distance. California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, 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
Vecsey, G. 2009. 32 Voices Louder Than Limbaugh’s. New York Times B12.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Piperno 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Piperno 2001; Lill and Joubert 2008).

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

  • Two authors: (Lill and Joubert 2008)
  • Three or more authors: (Anderson et al. 2008)

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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