How to format your references using the Marine Ecology Progress Series citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Marine Ecology Progress Series. 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
Knill E (2005) Quantum computing with realistically noisy devices. Nature 434:39–44.
A journal article with 2 authors
Johansson LC, Norberg UM (2000) Asymmetric toes aid underwater swimming. Nature 407:582–583.
A journal article with 3 authors
Hashiyama K, Hayashi Y, Kobayashi S (2011) Drosophila Sex lethal gene initiates female development in germline progenitors. Science 333:885–888.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Luo D, Yang W, Wang Z, Sadhanala A, Hu Q, Su R, Shivanna R, Trindade GF, Watts JF, Xu Z, Liu T, Chen K, Ye F, Wu P, Zhao L, Wu J, Tu Y, Zhang Y, Yang X, Zhang W, Friend RH, Gong Q, Snaith HJ, Zhu R (2018) Enhanced photovoltage for inverted planar heterojunction perovskite solar cells. Science 360:1442–1446.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Labuszewski JW, Nyhoff JE, Co R, Peterson PE (2010) The CME Group Risk Management Handbook. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.
An edited book
de Magistris M (2016) Circuiti: Fondamenti di circuiti per l’Ingegneria, 2a ed. 2016. Miano G (ed) Springer, Milano.
A chapter in an edited book
Pachler N, Bachmair B, Cook J (2010) Cases of Mobile Learning. In: Mobile Learning: Structures, Agency, Practices. Bachmair B, Cook J (eds) Springer US, Boston, MA, p 95–153

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 Ecology Progress Series.

Blog post
Davis J (2016) Archaeologist Claims To Have Found Aristotle’s Tomb. https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/archaeologists-claims-have-found-aristotles-tomb/ (accessed 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 (1989) Government Civilian Aircraft: Central Management Reforms Are Encouraging but Require Extensive Oversight. 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
Porter LA (2010) Defense Support of Civilian Authorities (DSCA): What emergency managers need to know. Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University, Washington, DC

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
Valen K (2007) My Sorority Pledge? I Swore Off Sisterhood. New York Times:96.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Knill 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Johansson & Norberg 2000, Knill 2005).

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

  • Two authors: (Johansson & Norberg 2000)
  • Three authors: (Hashiyama et al. 2011)
  • 99 or more authors: (Luo et al. 2018)

About the journal

Full journal titleMarine Ecology Progress Series
AbbreviationMar. Ecol. Prog. Ser.
ISSN (print)0171-8630
ISSN (online)1616-1599
ScopeAquatic Science
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Ecology

Other styles