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

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

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
ITO, G. 2001. Reykjanes ‘V’-shaped ridges originating from a pulsing and dehydrating mantle plume. Nature 411:681–684.
A journal article with 2 authors
ENGWERDA, C. R. & GOOD, M. F. 2012. Immunology. Platelets kill the parasite within. Science (New York, N.Y.) 338:1304–1305.
A journal article with 3 authors
HAYES, D., GRIFFIN, G. B. & ENGEL, G. S. 2013. Engineering coherence among excited states in synthetic heterodimer systems. Science (New York, N.Y.) 340:1431–1434.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
WANG, H., ZHU, X., LI, H., CUI, J., LIU, C., CHEN, X. & ZHANG, W. 2014. Induction of caspase-3-like activity in rice following release of cytochrome-f from the chloroplast and subsequent interaction with the ubiquitin-proteasome system. Scientific reports 4:5989.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
ANCHEYTA, J. 2016. Deactivation of Heavy Oil Hydroprocessing Catalysts. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
An edited book
STOCK, O. & ZANCANARO, M. (Eds.). 2007. PEACH - Intelligent Interfaces for Museum Visits. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. XVIII, 318 p. 102 illus., 32 illus. in color pp.
A chapter in an edited book
PETERSON, D. M., HUMMEL, C. A., PAULS, T. A., ARMSTRONG, J. T., BENSON, J. A., GILBREATH, C. G., HINDSLEY, R. B., HUTTER, D. J., JOHNSTON, K. J. & MOZURKEWICH, D. 2008. Imaging the Effects of Rotation in Altair and Vega. Pp. 43–54 in Richichi, A., Delplancke, F., Paresce, F. & Chelli, A. (eds.). The Power of Optical/IR Interferometry: Recent Scientific Results and 2nd Generation Instrumentation: Proceedings of the ESO Workshop held in Garching, Germany, 4-8 April 2005. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

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 Tropical Ecology.

Blog post
HALE, T. 2015, October 5. Farmers Stumble Across Mammoth Skeleton In Their Soybean Field. IFLScience.

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. 2006. Aviation Security: Transportation Security Administration Has Made Progress in Managing a Federal Security Workforce and Ensuring Security at U.S. Airports, but Challenges Remain. 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
DUAN, C. 2004. Dynamic Analysis of Dry Friction Path in a Torsional System. Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH.

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
WILLIAMS, J. 2017, September 3. A Love of Science Fiction Collides With a Classic. New York Times:C2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Ito 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Ito 2001, Engwerda & Good 2012).

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

  • Two authors: (Engwerda & Good 2012)
  • Three or more authors: (Wang et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleJournal of Tropical Ecology
AbbreviationJ. Trop. Ecol.
ISSN (print)0266-4674
ISSN (online)1469-7831
ScopeEcology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

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