How to format your references using the Journal of Field Ornithology citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Field Ornithology. 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
Van Dover, C.L. 2011. Tighten regulations on deep-sea mining. Nature 470: 31–33.
A journal article with 2 authors
Dustin, M.L. and M. Meyer-Hermann. 2012. Immunology. Antigen feast or famine. Science (New York, N.Y.) 335: 408–409.
A journal article with 3 authors
Solter, L.F., G.K. Kyei-Poku and S. Johny. 2013. Comment on “Invasive harlequin ladybird carries biological weapons against native competitors.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 341: 1342.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Johnson, R.E., M.T. Washington, L. Haracska, S. Prakash and L. Prakash. 2000. Eukaryotic polymerases iota and zeta act sequentially to bypass DNA lesions. Nature 406: 1015–1019.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Chan, N.H. and H.Y. Wong. 2006. Simulation Techniques in Financial Risk Management. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.
An edited book
Wimmer, M.A., H.J. Scholl, Å. Grönlund and K.V. Andersen (eds). 2006. Electronic Government: 5th International Conference, EGOV 2006, Kraków, Poland, September 4-8, 2006. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
A chapter in an edited book
Conder, M.D.E., Y.S. Kwon and J. Širáň. 2014. On External Symmetry Groups of Regular Maps. In Rigidity and Symmetry (R. Connelly, A. Ivić Weiss & W. Whiteley, eds.), pp. 87–96. 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 Journal of Field Ornithology.

Blog post
Carpineti, C. [online]. 2017. Astronaut Peggy Whitsun Plays A Prank On Her Russian Colleagues. IFLScience. IFLScience. <https://www.iflscience.com/space/astronaut-peggy-whitsun-plays-a-prank-on-her-russian-colleagues/> (30 October 2018).

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. 2005. Education’s Data Management Initiative: Significant Progress Made, but Better Planning Needed to Accomplish Project Goals. 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
Obi, C.N. 2012. Evaluation of feeding varying levels of digestible lysine on broiler breeder male reproductive characteristics and body weight changes. Doctoral dissertation, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS.

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
Jacoby, S. 2014. The Golden Rule. New York Times: BR7.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Van Dover 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Van Dover 2011; Dustin and Meyer-Hermann 2012).

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

  • Two authors: (Dustin and Meyer-Hermann 2012)
  • Three or more authors: (Johnson et al. 2000)

About the journal

Full journal titleJournal of Field Ornithology
AbbreviationJ. Field Ornithol.
ISSN (print)0273-8570
ISSN (online)1557-9263
ScopeEcology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

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