How to format your references using the Ecological Applications citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Ecological Applications. 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	Download the output style file
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

Farmer, E. E. 2001. Surface-to-air signals. Nature 411:854–856.

A journal article with 2 authors

Fialko, Y., and J. Pearse. 2012. Sombrero uplift above the Altiplano-Puna Magma Body: evidence of a ballooning mid-crustal diapir. Science (New York, N.Y.) 338:250–252.

A journal article with 3 authors

Zhang, Y., H. Lu, and C. I. Bargmann. 2005. Pathogenic bacteria induce aversive olfactory learning in Caenorhabditis elegans. Nature 438:179–184.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Fomin, Y. D., V. N. Ryzhov, E. N. Tsiok, V. V. Brazhkin, and K. Trachenko. 2014. Dynamic transition in supercritical iron. Scientific reports 4:7194.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Stevens, B. A., and E. Roediger. 2016. Breaking Negative Relationship Patterns. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Sojka, P., A. Horák, I. Kopeček, and K. Pala, editors. 2008. Text, Speech and Dialogue: 11th International Conference, TSD 2008, Brno, Czech Republic, September 8-12, 2008. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Michl, S. 2015. The Epistemics of “Personalized Medicine”. Rebranding Pharmacogenetics. Pages 61–78 in T. Fischer, M. Langanke, P. Marschall, and S. Michl, editors. Individualized Medicine: Ethical, Economical and Historical Perspectives. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

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 Ecological Applications.

Blog post

Andrew, E. 2014, November 10. New Study Suggests Meditation Can Actually Alter Your Body On A Cellular Level. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/does-mindfulness-physically-alter-cells-cancer-survivors0/.

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. Highlights of a Forum: Data and Analytics Innovation: Emerging Opportunities and Challenges. 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

Olson, B. A. 2012. Problem Management: A System Engineering Management Framework. Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University, Washington, DC.

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, August 29. Capriati Moves On, Calmly. 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 (Farmer 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Farmer 2001, Fialko and Pearse 2012).

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

Two authors: (Fialko and Pearse 2012)
Three or more authors: (Fomin et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Ecological Applications
Abbreviation	Ecol. Appl.
ISSN (print)	1051-0761
ISSN (online)	1939-5582
Scope	Ecology