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

Konacki, M. (2005). An extrasolar giant planet in a close triple-star system. Nature, 436(7048), 230–233.

A journal article with 2 authors

Bjørnstad, O. N., & Grenfell, B. T. (2001). Noisy clockwork: time series analysis of population fluctuations in animals. Science (New York, N.Y.), 293(5530), 638–643.

A journal article with 3 authors

Achlioptas, D., Naor, A., & Peres, Y. (2005). Rigorous location of phase transitions in hard optimization problems. Nature, 435(7043), 759–764.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Hove, J. R., Köster, R. W., Forouhar, A. S., Acevedo-Bolton, G., Fraser, S. E., & Gharib, M. (2003). Intracardiac fluid forces are an essential epigenetic factor for embryonic cardiogenesis. Nature, 421(6919), 172–177.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Paret, D. (2012). Flexray and its Applications. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Velásquez, J. D., Ríos, S. A., Howlett, R. J., & Jain, L. C. (Eds.). (2009). Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems: 13th International Conference, KES 2009, Santiago, Chile, September 28-30, 2009, Proceedings, Part II. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Hippler, R. K., Klopfer, D. S., Leventhal, L. M., Poor, G. M., Klein, B. A., & Jaffee, S. D. (2011). More than Speed? An Empirical Study of Touchscreens and Body Awareness on an Object Manipulation Task. In J. A. Jacko (Ed.), Human-Computer Interaction. Interaction Techniques and Environments: 14th International Conference, HCI International 2011, Orlando, FL, USA, July 9-14, 2011, Proceedings, Part II (pp. 33–42). 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

Fang, J. (2015, March 26). DNA Tests Uncover Evidence Of Infidelity In Royal Family Tree.

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. (2015). Critical Infrastructure Protection: Sector-Specific Agencies Need to Better Measure Cybersecurity Progress (No. GAO-16-79). 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

Mardakhanian, A. (2015). Blended CME, Inc. A business plan (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

Walsh, M. W. (2016, March 23). Supreme Court Hears Plea for Help From Puerto Rico. New York Times, p. B1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Konacki, 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Bjørnstad & Grenfell, 2001; Konacki, 2005).

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

Two authors: (Bjørnstad & Grenfell, 2001)
Three authors: (Achlioptas, Naor, & Peres, 2005)
6 or more authors: (Hove et al., 2003)

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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