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:

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

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 title	Marine Ecology Progress Series
Abbreviation	Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser.
ISSN (print)	0171-8630
ISSN (online)	1616-1599
Scope	Aquatic Science Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Ecology

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