How to format your references using the acta ethologica citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for acta ethologica. 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Tauris TM (2012) Spin-down of radio millisecond pulsars at genesis. Science 335:561–563

A journal article with 2 authors

Caliskan S, Laref A (2014) Spin transport properties of n-polyacene molecules (n = 1-15) connected to Ni surface electrodes: theoretical analysis. Sci Rep 4:7363

A journal article with 3 authors

Weeks AR, Marec F, Breeuwer JA (2001) A mite species that consists entirely of haploid females. Science 292:2479–2482

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Gazzani S, Lawrenson T, Woodward C, et al (2004) A link between mRNA turnover and RNA interference in Arabidopsis. Science 306:1046–1048

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Atherton J, Gil F, Center for Chemical Process Safety (2008) Incidents That Define Process Safety. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Essig M, Hülsmann M, Kern E-M, Klein-Schmeink S (eds) (2013) Supply Chain Safety Management: Security and Robustness in Logistics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Baldoni R, Guerraoui R, Levy RR, et al (2006) Unconscious Eventual Consistency with Gossips. In: Datta AK, Gradinariu M (eds) Stabilization, Safety, and Security of Distributed Systems: 8th International Symposium, SSS 2006, Dallas, TX, USA, November 17-19, 2006. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 65–81

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 acta ethologica.

Blog post

Luntz S (2014) Why Banning Flights From Ebola-Infected Areas Is A Terrible Idea. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/why-bans-flights-ebola-hotzones-would-backfire/. 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 (1980) Areas Needing Improvement in the Adult Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program. 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

Murillo K (2010) An analysis of California community college budget policy key components in multicollege districts. Doctoral dissertation, Pepperdine University

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

Vecsey G (2010) Settled in the City, But Still in a Hurry Every Weekend. New York Times B18

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Tauris 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Tauris 2012; Caliskan and Laref 2014).

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

Two authors: (Caliskan and Laref 2014)
Three or more authors: (Gazzani et al. 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	acta ethologica
Abbreviation	Acta Ethol.
ISSN (print)	0873-9749
ISSN (online)	1437-9546
Scope	Animal Science and Zoology Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics