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. Mandavilli A. Struggling to make an impact. Nature. 2004;430:935.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Haga SB, Venter JC. Genetics. FDA races in wrong direction. Science. 2003;301:466.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Pfennig DW, Harcombe WR, Pfennig KS. Frequency-dependent Batesian mimicry. Nature. 2001;410:323.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Bashir T, Dorrello NV, Amador V, Guardavaccaro D, Pagano M. Control of the SCF(Skp2-Cks1) ubiquitin ligase by the APC/C(Cdh1) ubiquitin ligase. Nature. 2004;428:190–3.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Smaini L. RF Analog Impairments Modeling for Communication Systems Simulation. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2012.

An edited book

1. Bychkov VL, Golubkov GV, Nikitin AI, editors. The Atmosphere and Ionosphere: Elementary Processes, Monitoring, and Ball Lightning. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2014.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Refaat SA. Egyptian Tourism with the Expected Water Scarcity Crisis. In: Katsoni V, editor. Cultural Tourism in a Digital Era: First International Conference IACuDiT, Athens, 2014. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2015. p. 39–56.

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. Hale T. “Most Convincing Picture” Of Loch Ness Monster Looks A Lot Like Some Seals. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2016.

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. ICBM Modernization: Status, Survivable Basing Issues, and Need To Reestablish a National Consensus. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1986 Sep. Report No.: NSIAD-86-200.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Nguyen TH. Adolescent substance use family-based treatment: A grant proposal project [Doctoral dissertation]. [Long Beach, CA]: California State University, Long Beach; 2015.

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. Brantley B. A Weird Wedding Night. And Then …. New York Times. 2016 Nov 22;C1.

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