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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Stone, R. 2000. HIGH ENERGY PHYSICS: CERN Link Breathes Life Into Russian Physics. - Science 290: 250–252.
A journal article with 2 authors
Bruick, R. K. and McKnight, S. L. 2001. A conserved family of prolyl-4-hydroxylases that modify HIF. - Science 294: 1337–1340.
A journal article with 3 authors
Ungless, M. A. et al. 2004. Uniform inhibition of dopamine neurons in the ventral tegmental area by aversive stimuli. - Science 303: 2040–2042.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Hetzel, R. et al. 2002. Low slip rates and long-term preservation of geomorphic features in Central Asia. - Nature 417: 428–432.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Nedoma, J. et al. 2011. Mathematical and Computational Methods in Biomechanics of Human Skeletal Systems. - John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Sabbadini, L. 2005. Protocollo per la valutazione delle Abilità Prassiche e della Coordinazione Motoria APCM (Y Tsafrir and E Iurato, Eds.). - Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Ageron, P. 2007. Logic without Self-Deductibility. - In: Beziau, J.-Y. (ed), Logica Universalis: Towards a General Theory of Logic. Birkhäuser, pp. 87–93.

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
Andrew, E. 2016. Academics Need To Embrace New Ways Of Writing And Sharing Research. - 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 1989. Battlefield Automation: Field Artillery Data Systems Acquisition Problems and Budget Impacts.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
Vallaster, J. R. 2019. Recognizing and Supporting the Forgotten Poverty Frontier: Exploring Suburban School Poverty in Elementary Schools.

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
Roach, M. 2016. Bodies at War. - New York Times: D1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Stone 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Stone 2000, Bruick and McKnight 2001).

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

  • Two authors: (Bruick and McKnight 2001)
  • Three or more authors: (Hetzel et al. 2002)

About the journal

Full journal titleOikos
AbbreviationOikos
ISSN (print)0030-1299
ISSN (online)1600-0706
ScopeEcology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

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