How to format your references using the Zoological Letters citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Zoological Letters. 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

1. Palmer AR. Symmetry breaking and the evolution of development. Science. 2004;306:828–33.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Engel MS, Grimaldi DA. New light shed on the oldest insect. Nature. 2004;427:627–30.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Chou SY, Keimel C, Gu J. Ultrafast and direct imprint of nanostructures in silicon. Nature. 2002;417:835–7.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Brissett NC, Pitcher RS, Juarez R, Picher AJ, Green AJ, Dafforn TR, et al. Structure of a NHEJ polymerase-mediated DNA synaptic complex. Science. 2007;318:456–9.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Staudt G. Experimentalphysik. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA; 2001.

An edited book

1. Murín J, Kompiš V, Kutiš V, editors. Computational Modelling and Advanced Simulations. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Wall T, Perrin D. We Know, but Still. In: Perrin D, editor. Slavoj Žižek: A Žižekian Gaze at Education. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015. p. 37–48.

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 Zoological Letters.

Blog post

1. Andrew D. Physicists Use Einstein’s ‘Spooky’ Entanglement To Invent Super-Sensitive Gravitational Wave Detector. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2017.

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

1. Government Accountability Office. Review of the Department of Agriculture’s Role in Regulating Biotechnology. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1985 Dec. Report No.: 128550.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

1. Hess JP. Exploring the Challenges of Training and Developing Millennials in the Business Environment [Doctoral dissertation]. [Scottsdale, AZ]: Northcentral University; 2012.

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

1. Greenhouse L. A New Justice, an Old Plea: More Money for the Bench. New York Times. 2006 Jan 1;113.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	Zoological Letters
Abbreviation	Zoological Lett.
ISSN (online)	2056-306X
Scope