How to format your references using the Population Ecology citation style

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

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
Hernando E (2008) Cancer. Aneuploidy advantages? Science 322:692–693
A journal article with 2 authors
Velicer GJ, Yu Y-TN (2003) Evolution of novel cooperative swarming in the bacterium Myxococcus xanthus. Nature 425:75–78
A journal article with 3 authors
Ma J, Bai L, Wang MD (2013) Transcription under torsion. Science 340:1580–1583
A journal article with 5 or more authors
Bachtold A, Hadley P, Nakanishi T, Dekker C (2001) Logic circuits with carbon nanotube transistors. Science 294:1317–1320

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Carter KB (2014) Actionable Intelligence. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ
An edited book
Gooßen LJ (ed) (2013) Inventing Reactions. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
A chapter in an edited book
Hoggard B (2016) Witch Bottles: Their Contents, Contexts and Uses. In: Hutton R (ed) Physical Evidence for Ritual Acts, Sorcery and Witchcraft in Christian Britain: A Feeling for Magic. Palgrave Macmillan UK, London, pp 91–105

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 Population Ecology.

Blog post
Andrew E (2013) Time lapse of molting giant spider crab. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/time-lapse-molting-giant-spider-crab/. 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 (1998) U.S. Postal Service: Postal and Telecommunications Sector Representation in International Organizations. 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
Pokhrel P (2010) Towards improved identification of spatially-distributed rainfall runoff models. Doctoral dissertation, University of Arizona

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
Gustines GG (2015) Familiar Face on ‘Sesame Street’ Tells of Her Own Childhood. New York Times C2

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Hernando 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Velicer and Yu 2003; Hernando 2008).

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

  • Two authors: (Velicer and Yu 2003)
  • Three or more authors: (Bachtold et al. 2001)

About the journal

Full journal titlePopulation Ecology
AbbreviationPopul. Ecol.
ISSN (print)1438-3896
ISSN (online)1438-390X
ScopeEcology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

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