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. Buckingham S. Seeing is believing. Nature. 2003;425:211.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Doulatov S, Daley GQ. Development. A stem cell perspective on cellular engineering. Science. 2013;342:700–2.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Scarola VW, Park K, Jain JK. Cooper instability of composite fermions. Nature. 2000;406:863–5.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Huang YH, Grasis JA, Miller AT, Xu R, Soonthornvacharin S, Andreotti AH, et al. Positive regulation of Itk PH domain function by soluble IP4. Science. 2007;316:886–9.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Bakus GJ. Quantitative Analysis of Marine Biological Communities. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2007.

An edited book

1. Alfirević N, Burušić J, Pavičić J, Relja R, editors. School Effectiveness and Educational Management: Towards a South-Eastern Europe Research and Public Policy Agenda. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Bergweiler W. Periodic Fatou Components and Singularities of the Inverse Function. In: Barsegian GA, Begehr HGW, editors. Topics in Analysis and its Applications. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2005. p. 47–59.

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. O`Callaghan J. No, That Incredible Atlas V Launch Was Not A UFO [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/space/no-incredible-atlas-v-launch-was-not-ufo-please-stop-asking/

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. Freight Railroads: Updated Information on Rates and Competition Issues. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2007 Sep. Report No.: GAO-07-1245T.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Slade SW. The complexity of leading in the 21st century: A case study of a successful charter school in an urban school district [Doctoral dissertation]. [Washington, DC]: George Washington University; 2010.

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. Justices to Say When Police Can Enter Private Home. New York Times. 2006 Jan 7;A12.

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