How to format your references using the Journal of Applied Ecology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Applied Ecology. 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

McAuley, P. (2000). Danger--hard hack area. Nature, 404(6773), 21.

A journal article with 2 authors

Billinge, S. J. L., & Levin, I. (2007). The problem with determining atomic structure at the nanoscale. Science (New York, N.Y.), 316(5824), 561–565.

A journal article with 3 authors

Yaguchi, S., Yaguchi, J., & Inaba, K. (2014). bicaudal-C is required for the formation of anterior neurogenic ectoderm in the sea urchin embryo. Scientific Reports, 4, 6852.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Barbieri, I., Tzelepis, K., Pandolfini, L., Shi, J., Millán-Zambrano, G., Robson, S. C., … Kouzarides, T. (2017). Promoter-bound METTL3 maintains myeloid leukaemia by m6A-dependent translation control. Nature, 552(7683), 126–131.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Smith, M. B. (2014). Compendium of Organic Synthetic Methods: Smith/Compendium. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Lei, L. (2015). Stochastic Petri Nets for Wireless Networks (C. Lin & Z. Zhong, Eds.). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Li, J., Du, J., He, K., & Gou, X. (2012). Cell-Death Control by Receptor Kinases in Arabidopsis thaliana. In F. Tax & B. Kemmerling (Eds.), Receptor-like Kinases in Plants: From Development to Defense (pp. 79–91). 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 Journal of Applied Ecology.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2014, October 10). Scientists Identify A Mechanism That Facilitates Brain Repair Following Stroke. Retrieved October 30, 2018, from IFLScience website: https://www.iflscience.com/brain/scientists-identify-mechanism-facilitates-brain-repair-following-stroke/

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. (1996). Telecommunications: Initiatives Taken by Three States to Promote Increased Access and Investment (No. RCED-96-68). 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

Long, K. E. (2009). Voluntary exiles: Short-term Western expatriates in three Chinese cities (Doctoral dissertation). 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

Saslow, L. (2008, December 21). Nassau and Suffolk Expecting More Funds. New York Times, p. LI5.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (McAuley, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Billinge & Levin, 2007; McAuley, 2000).

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

Two authors: (Billinge & Levin, 2007)
Three authors: (Yaguchi, Yaguchi, & Inaba, 2014)
6 or more authors: (Barbieri et al., 2017)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Applied Ecology
Abbreviation	J. Appl. Ecol.
ISSN (print)	0021-8901
ISSN (online)	1365-2664
Scope	Ecology

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