How to format your references using the Theoretical Ecology citation style

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

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Tucker BE (2013) Geophysics. Reducing earthquake risk. Science 341:1070–1072

A journal article with 2 authors

Regev A, Shapiro E (2002) Cells as computation. Nature 419:343

A journal article with 3 authors

Cossart R, Aronov D, Yuste R (2003) Attractor dynamics of network UP states in the neocortex. Nature 423:283–288

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Dong X-P, Cheng X, Mills E, et al (2008) The type IV mucolipidosis-associated protein TRPML1 is an endolysosomal iron release channel. Nature 455:992–996

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Moir I, Seabridge AG (2006) Military Avionics Systems. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Shaikh FK, Chowdhry BS, Zeadally S, et al (eds) (2014) Communication Technologies, Information Security and Sustainable Development: Third International Multi-topic Conference, IMTIC 2013, Jamshoro, Pakistan, December 18--20, 2013, Revised Selected Papers. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Macario AJL, Conway de Macario E, Cappello F (2013) Other Genetic Chaperonopathies. In: Conway de Macario E, Cappello F (eds) The Chaperonopathies: Diseases with Defective Molecular Chaperones. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp 63–69

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 Theoretical Ecology.

Blog post

Fang J (2015) Crushed Ants Smell Like Blue Cheese and Piña Coladas Gone Bad. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/crushed-ants-smell-blue-cheese-and-pi-coladas-gone-bad/. 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 (1981) National Research Centers Supported by NSF. 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

Witowski LL (2008) The relationship between instructional delivery methods and student learning preferences: What contributes to student satisfaction in an online learning environment? Doctoral dissertation, Capella University

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

Pastan L (2015) The Bridge. New York Times MM28

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Tucker 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Regev and Shapiro 2002; Tucker 2013).

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

Two authors: (Regev and Shapiro 2002)
Three or more authors: (Dong et al. 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	Theoretical Ecology
Abbreviation	Theor. Ecol.
ISSN (print)	1874-1738
ISSN (online)	1874-1746
Scope	Ecological Modelling Ecology