How to format your references using the Methods in Ecology and Evolution citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Methods in Ecology and Evolution. 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

Herculano-Houzel, S. (2013). Neuroscience. Sleep it out. Science (New York, N.Y.), 342(6156), 316–317.

A journal article with 2 authors

Coudreuse, D., & Nurse, P. (2010). Driving the cell cycle with a minimal CDK control network. Nature, 468(7327), 1074–1079.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hammarström, P., Schneider, F., & Kelly, J. W. (2001). Trans-suppression of misfolding in an amyloid disease. Science (New York, N.Y.), 293(5539), 2459–2462.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Mahendiran, K., Elie, C., Nebel, J.-C., Ryan, A., & Pierscionek, B. K. (2014). Primary sequence contribution to the optical function of the eye lens. Scientific Reports, 4, 5195.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Morrow, E., Boaz, A., Brearley, S., & Ross, F. (2011). Handbook of Service User Involvement in Nursing and Healthcare Research. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

An edited book

Bhowmik, M. K. (2016). ‘Out of School’ Ethnic Minority Young People in Hong Kong. (K. J. Kennedy, Ed.) (1st ed. 2016, Vol. 32). Singapore: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Song, H., & Liu, S. (2016). $L_0$ -Regularization Based on Sparse Prior for Image Deblurring. In Z. Zhang & K. Huang (Eds.), Intelligent Visual Surveillance: 4th Chinese Conference, IVS 2016, Beijing, China, October 19, 2016, Proceedings (pp. 30–36). Singapore: Springer.

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 Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

Blog post

Hamilton, K. (2016, October 11). What Is Habitat III And Why Does It Matter? A Beginner’s Guide To The New Urban Agenda. Retrieved 30 October 2018, from https://www.iflscience.com/environment/what-is-habitat-and-why-does-it-matter-a-beginners-guide-to-the-new-urban-agenda/

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. (2000). Federal Chief Information Officer: Leadership Needed to Confront Serious Challenges and Emerging Issues (No. T-AIMD-00-316). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Baxter, J. M. (2010). Enantioselective Mannich-type Reactions Promoted by Strained Silane Lewis Acids: Selective Generation of Two Contiguous Stereocenters and Entry into a Novel Class of Pyrrolidines (Doctoral dissertation). Columbia University, New York, NY.

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

Chen, D. W. (2017, May 31). Remembering a SEALs Parachutist Who ‘Lived Life to the Fullest’. New York Times, p. A19.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Herculano-Houzel, 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Coudreuse & Nurse, 2010; Herculano-Houzel, 2013).

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

Two authors: (Coudreuse & Nurse, 2010)
Three authors: (Hammarström, Schneider, & Kelly, 2001)
6 or more authors: (Mahendiran, Elie, Nebel, Ryan, & Pierscionek, 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Methods in Ecology and Evolution
Abbreviation	Methods Ecol. Evol.
ISSN (online)	2041-210X
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Ecological Modelling