How to format your references using the Taxon citation style

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

Clayton, D.D. 2000. We have touched the dust from dying stars. Nature 404: 329.

A journal article with 2 authors

Leontis, N.B., & Westhof, E. 2014. Chemistry. Self-assembled RNA nanostructures. Science 345: 732–733.

A journal article with 3 authors

Causier, B., Kieffer, M., & Davies, B. 2002. Plant biology. MADS-box genes reach maturity. Science 296: 275–276.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Du, X., Wen, J., Wang, Y., Karmaus, P.W.F., Khatamian, A., Tan, H., Li, Y., Guy, C., Nguyen, T.-L.M., Dhungana, Y., Neale, G., Peng, J., Yu, J., & Chi, H. 2018. Hippo/Mst signalling couples metabolic state and immune function of CD8α+ dendritic cells. Nature 558: 141–145.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Quéguiner, B. 2016. The Biogeochemical Cycle of Silicon in the Ocean. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Brinkman, D.B., Holroyd, P.A., & Gardner, J.D. (eds.). 2013. Morphology and Evolution of Turtles. Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Rouane, M.H., Huchard, M., Napoli, A., & Valtchev, P. 2007. A Proposal for Combining Formal Concept Analysis and Description Logics for Mining Relational Data. Pp. 51–65 in: S.O. Kuznetsov & S. Schmidt (eds.), Formal Concept Analysis: 5th International Conference, ICFCA 2007, Clermont-Ferrand, France, February 12-16, 2007. Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

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 Taxon.

Blog post

Davis, J. 2015, November 18. Mysterious Denisovan Humans Were More Genetically Diverse Than Neanderthals. (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. 2005. Higher Education: Federal Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Programs and Related Trends. No. GAO-06-114. 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

Breska, J. 2013. Mentoring for juvenile gang members and at-risk youth: A grant proposal project. Doctoral dissertation. Long Beach, CA: California State University, Long Beach.

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

Hodara, S. 2015, March 1. Before YouTube, Experimenting With Video. New York Times, p. WE10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Clayton, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Clayton, 2000; Leontis & Westhof, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Leontis & Westhof, 2014)
Three or more authors: (Du & al., 2018)

About the journal

Full journal title	Taxon
Abbreviation	Taxon
ISSN (print)	0040-0262
ISSN (online)	1996-8175
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Plant Science