How to format your references using the Oecologia citation style

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

Solow AR (2013) Global warming: A call for peace on climate and conflict. Nature 497:179–180

A journal article with 2 authors

Singer PA, Daar AS (2001) Harnessing genomics and biotechnology to improve global health equity. Science 294:87–89

A journal article with 3 authors

Stevens RC, Yokoyama S, Wilson IA (2001) Global efforts in structural genomics. Science 294:89–92

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Wang W, Zhang W, Gu J, et al (2013) Design of a structure with low incident and viewing angle dependence inspired by Morpho butterflies. Sci Rep 3:3427

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Matthys W, Lochman JE (2016) Oppositional Defiant Disorder and Conduct Disorder in Childhood. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Meyers RA (ed) (2011) Complex Systems in Finance and Econometrics. Springer, New York, NY

A chapter in an edited book

Capaccioli M, Galano S (2012) Giuseppa Guacci: Mamma o non mamma. In: Galano S (ed) Arminio Nobile e la misura del cielo: ovvero Le disavventure di un astronomo napoletano. Springer, Milano, pp 39–56

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 Oecologia.

Blog post

Hamilton K (2015) Plastic-Eating Mealworms Could Help Reduce Landfill Waste. In: IFLScience. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (1983) Deaf/Blind Children and the Centers Serving Them. 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

Nguyen HM (2009) Valuation effects and external adjustment. Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park

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

Lee L (2008) Eve Thompson and Richard Robinson. New York Times ST11

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Solow 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Singer and Daar 2001; Solow 2013).

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

Two authors: (Singer and Daar 2001)
Three or more authors: (Wang et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Oecologia
Abbreviation	Oecologia
ISSN (print)	0029-8549
ISSN (online)	1432-1939
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

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