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

Eggleston CM (2008) Geochemistry. Toward new uses for hematite. Science 320:184–185

A journal article with 2 authors

Patel S, Cone RD (2015) Neuroscience: a cellular basis for the munchies. Nature 519:38–40

A journal article with 3 authors

Seymour RS, White CR, Gibernau M (2003) Environmental biology: heat reward for insect pollinators. Nature 426:243–244

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Saccone P, Cotugno G, Russo F, et al (2014) Sensory-motor behavioral characterization of an animal model of Maroteaux-Lamy syndrome (or Mucopolysaccharidosis VI). Sci Rep 4:3644

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Center for Chemical Process Safety (2010) Guidelines for Acquisition Evaluation and Post Merger Integration. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Guerraoui R, Romano P (eds) (2015) Transactional Memory. Foundations, Algorithms, Tools, and Applications: COST Action Euro-TM IC1001. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Marsh GP (2014) Introduction (excerpts). In: Ndubisi FO (ed) The Ecological Design and Planning Reader. Island Press/Center for Resource Economics, Washington, DC, pp 25–32

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

Luntz S (2016) Conflicting Findings On The Survival Of The Greenland Ice Sheet. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/conflicting-findings-on-the-survival-of-the-greenland-ice-sheet/. 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 (1994) Tax Systems Modernization: Automated Underreporter Project Shows Need for Human Resource Planning. 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

Berkow K (2017) Importance of Effective Leadership for the Success of Mergers and Acquisitions. Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine 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

Vecsey G (2011) Indomitable Russell Values One Accolade Above the Rest. New York Times SP1

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Eggleston 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Eggleston 2008; Patel and Cone 2015).

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

Two authors: (Patel and Cone 2015)
Three or more authors: (Saccone et al. 2014)

About the journal

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