How to format your references using the Journal for Nature Conservation citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal for Nature Conservation. 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.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
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
Bandfield, J. L. (2007). High-resolution subsurface water-ice distributions on Mars. Nature, 447(7140), 64–67.
A journal article with 2 authors
Djupedal, I., & Ekwall, K. (2008). Molecular biology. The paradox of silent heterochromatin. Science (New York, N.Y.), 320(5876), 624–625.
A journal article with 3 authors
Shin, C., Feng, Y., & Manley, J. L. (2004). Dephosphorylated SRp38 acts as a splicing repressor in response to heat shock. Nature, 427(6974), 553–558.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Zhang, Y.-H., Chen, Y., Zhang, Y.-M., Yang, Y., Chen, J.-T., & Liu, Y. (2014). Recycling gene carrier with high efficiency and low toxicity mediated by L-cystine-bridged bis(β-cyclodextrin)s. Scientific Reports, 4, 7471.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Reason, B., Løvlie, L., & Brand Flu, M. (2015). Service Design for Business. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Palese, P. (Ed.). (2005). Modulation of Host Gene Expression and Innate Immunity by Viruses. Springer Netherlands.
A chapter in an edited book
Ratzenhofer-Komenda, B., Favory, R., Welslau, W., Smolle-Jüttner, F. M., & Mathieu, D. (2006). Physiologic Effects of Hyperbaric Oxygen on Oxygen Transport and Tissue Oxygen Pressure. In D. Mathieu (Ed.), Handbook on Hyperbaric Medicine (pp. 49–73). Springer Netherlands.

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 Journal for Nature Conservation.

Blog post
Andrews, R. (2016, July 26). First Baby In Europe With Zika-Related Microcephaly Born In Spain. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/first-baby-europe-zika-related-microcephaly-born-spain/

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). Transportation Infrastructure: Supplemental Information on the Federal Highway Administration’s Project Selection Process for Five Discretionary Programs (RCED-98-179R). 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
Van Vlack, K. A. (2012). Puaxant tuvip: Powerlands Southern Paiute cultural landscapes and pilgrimage trails [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona.

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
(nyt), S. K. (2005, June 11). World Briefing | Europe: Moldova: Parliament Tells Russia To Pull Troops. New York Times, A5.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bandfield, 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Bandfield, 2007; Djupedal & Ekwall, 2008).

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

  • Two authors: (Djupedal & Ekwall, 2008)
  • Three authors: (Shin et al., 2004)
  • 6 or more authors: (Zhang et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleJournal for Nature Conservation
AbbreviationJ. Nat. Conserv.
ISSN (print)1617-1381
ScopeEcology
Nature and Landscape Conservation

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