How to format your references using the The Auk citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Auk. 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.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
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
Osborne, I. (2015). Light and Optics. Frontiers in light & optics. Introduction. Science (New York, N.Y.) 348:514–515.
A journal article with 2 authors
Bakker, H. J., and H.-K. Nienhuys (2002). Delocalization of protons in liquid water. Science (New York, N.Y.) 297:587–590.
A journal article with 3 authors
Alapan, Y., J. A. Little, and U. A. Gurkan (2014). Heterogeneous red blood cell adhesion and deformability in sickle cell disease. Scientific reports 4:7173.
A journal article with 13 or more authors
Dahl, C. D., M. J. Rasch, M. Tomonaga, and I. Adachi (2013). Developmental processes in face perception. Scientific reports 3:1044.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Sun, B. (2016). Multiphase Flow in Oil and Gas Well Drilling. John Wiley & Sons Singapore Pte. Ltd, Singapore.
An edited book
Nagel, W. E., D. H. Kröner, and M. M. Resch (Editors) (2013). High Performance Computing in Science and Engineering ‘12: Transactions of the High Performance Computing Center, Stuttgart (HLRS) 2012. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
A chapter in an edited book
Deng, Z. (2016). Public Enforcement of Antitrust Law in China: Perspective of Procedural Fairness. In Competition Law Enforcement in the BRICS and in Developing Countries: Legal and Economic Aspects (F. Jenny and Y. Katsoulacos, Editors). Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 135–148.

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 The Auk.

Blog post
Fang, J. (2015). New Hominin Species Discovered in Ethiopia. IFLScience. [Online.] Available at https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/new-hominin-species-discovered-ethiopia/.

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 (1990). ADP Telecommunications: HCFA Needs to Expedite Transition to FTS 2000. U.S. Government Printing Office IMTEC-91-10.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
Bristow, L. W. (2009). There is an old woman: The final stage of individuation.

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
Dyson, M. E. (2017). Racial Violence on the Screen. New York Times:SR9.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Osborne 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Bakker and Nienhuys 2002, Osborne 2015).

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

  • Two authors: (Bakker and Nienhuys 2002)
  • Three or more authors: (Dahl et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal titleThe Auk
AbbreviationAuk
ISSN (print)0004-8038
ISSN (online)1938-4254
ScopeAnimal Science and Zoology
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

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