How to format your references using the Marine and Coastal Fisheries citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Marine and Coastal Fisheries. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Lester, B. 2007. 2007 visualization challenge winners. Science (New York, N.Y.) 317(5846):1858–1863.

A journal article with 2 authors

Vukusic, P., and J. R. Sambles. 2003. Photonic structures in biology. Nature 424(6950):852–855.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sharp, P. M., J. C. Rayner, and B. H. Hahn. 2013. Evolution. Great apes and zoonoses. Science (New York, N.Y.) 340(6130):284–286.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Kory, N., G. A. Wyant, G. Prakash, J. Uit de Bos, F. Bottanelli, M. E. Pacold, S. H. Chan, C. A. Lewis, T. Wang, H. R. Keys, Y. E. Guo, and D. M. Sabatini. 2018. SFXN1 is a mitochondrial serine transporter required for one-carbon metabolism. Science (New York, N.Y.) 362(6416).

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Adhikari, S. K. 2005. Variational Principles and the Numerical Solution of Scattering Problems. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, FRG.

An edited book

The BACC II Author Team, editor. 2015. Second Assessment of Climate Change for the Baltic Sea Basin. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

Zhang, Z., Q. Ye, R. Law, and Y. Li. 2009. Automatic Detection of Subjective Sentences Based on Chinese Subjective Patterns. Pages 29–36 in Y. Shi, S. Wang, Y. Peng, J. Li, and Y. Zeng, editors. Cutting-Edge Research Topics on Multiple Criteria Decision Making: 20th International Conference, MCDM 2009, Chengdu/Jiuzhaigou, China, June 21-26, 2009. Proceedings. 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 Marine and Coastal Fisheries.

Blog post

Fang, J. 2014, December 31. Astronomers Catch Surprise “Eclipse” Of Jupiter’s Moons. 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. 2002. Information Technology: DOD Needs to Improve Process for Ensuring Interoperability of Telecommunications Switches. U.S. Government Printing Office, GAO-02-681, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Goodison, S. E. 2014. The undiscovered country: Homicide, dynamic change, and deterrence in Washington, D.C. Neighborhoods, 1998-2006. Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD.

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

Wilson, D. J., and J. Eligon. 2016, January 14. Rams’ Departure Is Another Blow to St. Louis Area, and a Chance to Shift Priorities. New York Times:A14.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Lester 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Vukusic and Sambles 2003; Lester 2007).

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

Two authors: (Vukusic and Sambles 2003)
Three or more authors: (Kory et al. 2018)

About the journal

Full journal title	Marine and Coastal Fisheries
Abbreviation	Mar. Coast. Fish.
ISSN (online)	1942-5120
Scope	Aquatic Science Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics