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

Eisenberg R (2009) Chemistry. Rethinking water splitting. Science 324:44–45

A journal article with 2 authors

Reilly SM, White TD (2003) Hypaxial motor patterns and the function of epipubic bones in primitive mammals. Science 299:400–402

A journal article with 3 authors

Mani A, Rahwan I, Pentland A (2013) Inducing peer pressure to promote cooperation. Sci Rep 3:1735

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Farooqi IS, Keogh JM, Kamath S, et al (2001) Partial leptin deficiency and human adiposity. Nature 414:34–35

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Estampe D (2014) Supply Chain Performance and Evaluation Models. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Didonna F (ed) (2009) Clinical Handbook of Mindfulness. Springer, New York, NY

A chapter in an edited book

Leal Filho W, Kovaleva M (2015) Methods of Food Waste Reduction. In: Kovaleva M (ed) Food Waste and Sustainable Food Waste Management in the Baltic Sea Region. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 51–80

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

Hale T (2016) Wally The Whale’s Carcass Keeps Washing Up On California Beaches. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/wally-the-whale-s-carcass-keeps-washing-up-on-california-beaches/. 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) Higher Education: Tuition Increases and Colleges’ Efforts to Contain Costs. 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

Avila B (2013) Comparison of paternal and maternal involvement in a government funded home-based intervention program: A multivariate analysis of parent gender, child gender and age of the child. Doctoral dissertation, 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

LaFRANIERE S, Kirkpatrick DD, Vogel KP (2017) Guest at Trump Tower Meeting Has Aided Close Allies of Putin. New York Times A1

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Eisenberg 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Reilly and White 2003; Eisenberg 2009).

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

Two authors: (Reilly and White 2003)
Three or more authors: (Farooqi et al. 2001)

About the journal

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

Research and Writing Guides