How to format your references using the Waterbirds citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Waterbirds. 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
O’Brien, J.L. 2007. Optical quantum computing. Science (New York, N.Y.) 318: 1567–1570.
A journal article with 2 authors
Hivon, E., and M. Kamionkowski. 2002. Cosmology. A new window to the early universe. Science (New York, N.Y.) 298: 1349–1350.
A journal article with 3 authors
Heil, M. … W. Boland. 2005. Postsecretory hydrolysis of nectar sucrose and specialization in ant/plant mutualism. Science (New York, N.Y.) 308: 560–563.
A journal article with 3 or more authors
Lan, H. … Q.-H. Wan. 2014. The first report of a Pelecaniformes defensin cluster: characterization of β-defensin genes in the crested ibis based on BAC libraries. Scientific reports 4: 6923.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Wells, R. 2004. Global Credit Management. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Oxford, UK.
An edited book
Oranje, A.P. … T. Shwayder (eds.). 2016. Practical Pediatric Dermatology: Controversies in Diagnosis and Treatment. Springer International Publishing, Cham.
A chapter in an edited book
Myers, J. 2005. In one era and out the other. Pages 43–50 in Discoveries in Photosynthesis (Govindjee … J.F. Allen, Eds.). Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.

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 Waterbirds.

Blog post
Davis, J. 2016. ‘Death Spiral’ Could Be A Fourth Phase Of Life. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/death-spiral-could-be-a-fourth-phase-of-life/, accessed, 30 October 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. 2016. Library Services for Those with Disabilities: Additional Steps Needed to Ease Access to Services and Modernize Technology. 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
Brooks, C.E. 2010. Action research: Interventions for helping leaders use groups to affect conflict between workforce generations. University of Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ.

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
Hollander, S. 2000. Gimelstob Works the Crowd. New York Times D4.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (O’Brien 2007).
This sentence cites two references (O’Brien 2007; Hivon and Kamionkowski 2002).

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

  • Two authors: (Hivon and Kamionkowski 2002)
  • Three or more authors: (Lan et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleWaterbirds
AbbreviationWaterbirds
ISSN (print)1524-4695
ISSN (online)1938-5390
ScopeAnimal Science and Zoology

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