How to format your references using the Trees citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Trees. 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
Visscher PM (2001) erratum: A viable herd of genetically uniform cattle. Nature 410:36
A journal article with 2 authors
Li L, Ye K (2006) Crystal structure of an H/ACA box ribonucleoprotein particle. Nature 443:302–307
A journal article with 3 authors
McMahon SM, Miller KH, Drake J (2001) Social science and ecology. Networking tips for social scientists and ecologists. Science 293:1604–1605
A journal article with 5 or more authors
Li WH, Gu Z, Wang H, Nekrutenko A (2001) Evolutionary analyses of the human genome. Nature 409:847–849

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Lovejoy DA (2005) Neuroendocrinology. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK
An edited book
Joux A (ed) (2009) Advances in Cryptology - EUROCRYPT 2009: 28th Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques, Cologne, Germany, April 26-30, 2009. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
A chapter in an edited book
Hardt N, Kuttenberger J (2010) Epidemiological Aspects of Craniofacial/Skull Base Fractures. In: Hardt N, Kuttenberger J (eds) Craniofacial Trauma: Diagnosis and Management. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 63–76

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 Trees.

Blog post
Andrew E (2015) Carbon Stored Deep In Antarctic Waters Ended The Last Ice Age. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/carbon-stored-deep-antarctic-waters-ended-last-ice-age/. 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 (2003) College Completion: Additional Efforts Could Help Education with Its Completion Goals. 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
Ortiz-Quiusky S (2015) Substance abuse, smoking, and depression among military veterans. 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
Logan L (2013) Selfless. New York Times MM54

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Visscher 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Visscher 2001; Li and Ye 2006).

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

  • Two authors: (Li and Ye 2006)
  • Three or more authors: (Li et al. 2001)

About the journal

Full journal titleTrees
AbbreviationTrees (Berl. West)
ISSN (print)0931-1890
ISSN (online)1432-2285
ScopeForestry
Plant Science
Physiology
Ecology

Other styles