How to format your references using the Molecular Ecology citation style

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

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

Zellers, D. (2005). Scientists and societies. Building a regional postdoc community. Nature, 433(7022), 178.

A journal article with 2 authors

Aral, S., & Walker, D. (2012). Identifying influential and susceptible members of social networks. Science (New York, N.Y.), 337(6092), 337–341.

A journal article with 3 authors

Nakatsuji, S., Kiyohara, N., & Higo, T. (2015). Large anomalous Hall effect in a non-collinear antiferromagnet at room temperature. Nature, 527(7577), 212–215.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Wang, X., Zhao, X., Gao, P., & Wu, M. (2013). c-Myc modulates microRNA processing via the transcriptional regulation of Drosha. Scientific Reports, 3, 1942.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Williams, D. L. (2012). Ophthalmology of Exotic Pets. West Sussex, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Ando, N., Balakirsky, S., Hemker, T., Reggiani, M., & Stryk, O. von (Eds.). (2010). Simulation, Modeling, and Programming for Autonomous Robots: Second International Conference, SIMPAR 2010, Darmstadt, Germany, November 15-18, 2010. Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Hamza, W. (2009). The Nile Delta. In H. J. Dumont (Ed.), The Nile: Origin, Environments, Limnology and Human Use (pp. 75–94). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

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 Molecular Ecology.

Blog post

Hale, T. (2016, June 6). Chile Has Generated So Much Solar Power It’s Giving It Away For Free.

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. (1999). Domestic Aviation: Effects of Changes in How Airline Tickets Are Sold (No. RCED-99-221). 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

Fisher, M. D. (2014). The impact adult supervision, role models, and civic engagement has on the health status of adolescents (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Binder, S. (2017, February 10). A Game Plan for Senate Democrats. New York Times, p. A23.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Zellers, 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Aral & Walker, 2012; Zellers, 2005).

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

Two authors: (Aral & Walker, 2012)
Three authors: (Nakatsuji, Kiyohara, & Higo, 2015)
6 or more authors: (Wang, Zhao, Gao, & Wu, 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Molecular Ecology
Abbreviation	Mol. Ecol.
ISSN (print)	0962-1083
ISSN (online)	1365-294X
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Genetics