How to format your references using the Oikos citation style

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

Evans, R. L. 2008. Geochemistry. Carbon in charge. - Science 322: 1338–1340.

A journal article with 2 authors

Nicewicz, D. A. and MacMillan, D. W. C. 2008. Merging photoredox catalysis with organocatalysis: the direct asymmetric alkylation of aldehydes. - Science 322: 77–80.

A journal article with 3 authors

Roberts, R. B. et al. 2009. Sexual conflict resolved by invasion of a novel sex determiner in Lake Malawi cichlid fishes. - Science 326: 998–1001.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Huang, H. et al. 2014. Systematic prediction of drug combinations based on clinical side-effects. - Sci. Rep. 4: 7160.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Van Der Pijl, P. et al. 2016. How To Design a Better Business. - John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

2015. Dietary Chinese Herbs: Chemistry, Pharmacology and Clinical Evidence (Y Liu, Z Wang, and J Zhang, Eds.). - Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Harvey, V. A. 2008. The ethics of belief and two conceptions of christian faith. - In: Long, E. T. and Horn, P. (eds), Ethics of Belief: Essays in Tribute to D.Z. Phillips. Springer Netherlands, pp. 39–54.

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 Oikos.

Blog post

Andrews, R. 2016. HPV Vaccine Halves Cervical Cancer Rates In Just 10 Years. - IFLScience

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. Environmental Protection Agency: Comparing Annual Budgets for Science and Technology.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Galan, M. 2012. Educational practices to support homeless students.

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

Wines, M. 2017. Wisconsin Law Deterred Voters, Study Finds. - New York Times: A15.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Evans 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Nicewicz and MacMillan 2008, Evans 2008).

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

Two authors: (Nicewicz and MacMillan 2008)
Three or more authors: (Huang et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Oikos
Abbreviation	Oikos
ISSN (print)	0030-1299
ISSN (online)	1600-0706
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics