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

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

Kitching, R. L. (2006). Ecology. Crafting the pieces of the diversity jigsaw puzzle. Science (New York, N.Y.), 313(5790), 1055–1057.

A journal article with 2 authors

Petersen, C. P., & Reddien, P. W. (2008). Smed-betacatenin-1 is required for anteroposterior blastema polarity in planarian regeneration. Science (New York, N.Y.), 319(5861), 327–330.

A journal article with 3 authors

Brisbin, I. L., Jr, Austad, S., & Jacobson, S. K. (2000). Canine detectives: the nose knows-or does it? Science (New York, N.Y.), 290(5494), 1093b.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Cohen, E., Bieschke, J., Perciavalle, R. M., Kelly, J. W., & Dillin, A. (2006). Opposing activities protect against age-onset proteotoxicity. Science (New York, N.Y.), 313(5793), 1604–1610.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Qiu, R. G. (2014). Service Science. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Sannella, D. (2012). Foundations of Algebraic Specification and Formal Software Development (A. Tarlecki, Ed.). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Tirri, K. (2016). The Core of School Pedagogy. In H. Niemi, A. Toom, & A. Kallioniemi (Eds.), Miracle of Education: The Principles and Practices of Teaching and Learning in Finnish Schools (Second Revised Edition) (pp. 57–68). Rotterdam: SensePublishers.

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 Ecology.

Blog post

Carpineti, A. (2016, November 16). Electrons Are Mysteriously Accelerated At The Edge Our Planet’s Magnetosphere. Retrieved October 30, 2018, from IFLScience website: https://www.iflscience.com/space/electrons-are-mysteriously-accelerated-at-the-edge-our-planet-s-magnetosphere/

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. (1999). Migrant Children: Education and HHS Need to Improve the Exchange of Participant Information (No. HEHS-00-4). 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

Dimapilis, B. (2015). Service line extension: Acquisition of fluoroscopy equipment to supplement pain management procedures (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

Oestreich, J. R. (2016, November 10). Juilliard’s Fast Takes on French Baroque. New York Times, p. C2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Kitching, 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Kitching, 2006; Petersen & Reddien, 2008).

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

Two authors: (Petersen & Reddien, 2008)
Three authors: (Brisbin, Austad, & Jacobson, 2000)
6 or more authors: (Cohen, Bieschke, Perciavalle, Kelly, & Dillin, 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Ecology
Abbreviation	J. Ecol.
ISSN (print)	0022-0477
ISSN (online)	1365-2745
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Plant Science Ecology