How to format your references using the Ecological Complexity citation style

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

McQuate, G.T., 2014. Green light synergistally enhances male sweetpotato weevil response to sex pheromone. Sci. Rep. 4, 4499.

A journal article with 2 authors

Stanley, S., Bloxham, J., 2004. Convective-region geometry as the cause of Uranus’ and Neptune’s unusual magnetic fields. Nature 428, 151–153.

A journal article with 3 authors

McKnight, S., Beyer, A., Gall, J., 2012. Retrospective. Oscar Miller (1925-2012). Science 335, 1457.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Garcia-Barros, M., Paris, F., Cordon-Cardo, C., Lyden, D., Rafii, S., Haimovitz-Friedman, A., Fuks, Z., Kolesnick, R., 2003. Tumor response to radiotherapy regulated by endothelial cell apoptosis. Science 300, 1155–1159.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Pines, J.M., Carpenter, C.R., Raja, A.S., Schuur, J.D., 2012. Evidence-Based Emergency Care. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Clark, R., Livingstone, D.W., Smaller, H. (Eds.), 2012. Teacher Learning and Power in the Knowledge Society, The Knowledge Economy and Education. SensePublishers, Rotterdam.

A chapter in an edited book

Aziz, S.W., Aziz, M.H., 2013. Major Signaling Pathways Involved in Breast Cancer, in: Ahmad, A. (Ed.), Breast Cancer Metastasis and Drug Resistance: Progress and Prospects. Springer, New York, NY, pp. 47–64.

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 Complexity.

Blog post

Taub, B., 2016. Alcoholism May Be Hardwired Into Your Genes, Study Finds [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1977. National Aeronautics and Space Administration Should Provide the Congress with More Information on the Pioneer Venus Project (No. PSAD-77-65). 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

Tosti, C.L., 2009. Quantification of dispersed and aggregated iron in vivo by magnetic resonance imaging (Doctoral dissertation). Columbia University, New York, NY.

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

Horowitz, J., Alderman, L., 2017. Angry at E.U., Greece Warms to China’s Cash. New York Times A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (McQuate, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (McQuate, 2014; Stanley and Bloxham, 2004).

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

Two authors: (Stanley and Bloxham, 2004)
Three or more authors: (Garcia-Barros et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal title	Ecological Complexity
Abbreviation	Ecol. Complex.
ISSN (print)	1476-945X
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Ecological Modelling