How to format your references using the Ecological Informatics citation style

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

Koen, D., 2005. Nuts and bolts. Soft skills. Nature 435, 126.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ernst, M.O., Banks, M.S., 2002. Humans integrate visual and haptic information in a statistically optimal fashion. Nature 415, 429–433.

A journal article with 3 authors

Mackenzie, R.B., Dewberry, C.T., Leopold, K.R., 2015. SULFUR CHEMISTRY. Gas phase observation and microwave spectroscopic characterization of formic sulfuric anhydride. Science 349, 58–61.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Sun, Y., Zhang, W., Xing, Y., Li, F., Zhao, Y., Xia, Z., Wang, L., Ma, X., Xue, Q.-K., Wang, J., 2014. High temperature superconducting FeSe films on SrTiO3 substrates. Sci. Rep. 4, 6040.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bagdonavičius, V., Julius, K., Nikulin, M.S., 2011. Non-parametric Tests for Complete Data. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Colace, F., De Santo, M., Moscato, V., Picariello, A., Schreiber, F.A., Tanca, L. (Eds.), 2015. Data Management in Pervasive Systems, 1st ed. 2015. ed, Data-Centric Systems and Applications. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

Fortmann, L., Ndhlovu, A., Ndlovu, A., Philippe, R., Rodrigue, C., Wilson, K., 2016. Climate Change and Social Sustainability: A Case for Polycentric Sustainabilities, in: Lal, R., Kraybill, D., Hansen, D.O., Singh, B.R., Mosogoya, T., Eik, L.O. (Eds.), Climate Change and Multi-Dimensional Sustainability in African Agriculture: Climate Change and Sustainability in Agriculture. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 43–57.

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 Informatics.

Blog post

Andrew, E., 2015. Parts Of Southern Africa Are Within Tantalising Reach Of Eliminating Malaria [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/parts-southern-africa-are-within-tantalising-reach-eliminating-malaria/ (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. Study of Guaranteed Student Loan Bankruptcy (No. HRD-77-80). 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

Vallaster, J.R., 2019. Recognizing and Supporting the Forgotten Poverty Frontier: Exploring Suburban School Poverty in Elementary Schools (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

Markowitz, J.C., 2016. There’s Such a Thing as Too Much Neuroscience. New York Times A21.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Koen, 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Ernst and Banks, 2002; Koen, 2005).

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

Two authors: (Ernst and Banks, 2002)
Three or more authors: (Sun et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Ecological Informatics
Abbreviation	Ecol. Inform.
ISSN (print)	1574-9541
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Computational Theory and Mathematics Computer Science Applications Ecological Modelling Ecology Applied Mathematics Modelling and Simulation