How to format your references using the Ecological Research citation style

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

Heymann DL (2014) Ebola: learn from the past. Nature 514:299–300

A journal article with 2 authors

Wang X, Huang B (2014) Computational study of in-plane phonon transport in Si thin films. Sci Rep 4:6399

A journal article with 3 authors

DeBose JL, Lema SC, Nevitt GA (2008) Dimethylsulfoniopropionate as a foraging cue for reef fishes. Science 319:1356

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Huberman AD, Wang G-Y, Liets LC, et al (2003) Eye-specific retinogeniculate segregation independent of normal neuronal activity. Science 300:994–998

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Fryirs KA, Brierley GJ (2012) Geomorphic Analysis of River Systems. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Hahn H, Sidorenko A, Tiginyanu I (eds) (2009) Nanoscale Phenomena: Fundamentals and Applications. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Janaki SS, Ebenezer D (2006) A Blur Reducing Adaptive Filter for the Removal of Mixed Noise in Images. In: Elleithy K, Sobh T, Mahmood A, et al. (eds) Advances in Computer, Information, and Systems Sciences, and Engineering: Proceedings of IETA 2005, TeNe 2005, EIAE 2005. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp 26–30

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 Research.

Blog post

Carpineti A (2017) Researchers Create An Artificial Skin That Can Sense Changes In Temperature. In: IFLScience. 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 (2000) Federal Communications Commission: Extending Wireless Telecommunications Services to Tribal Lands. 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

Hamilton SM (2015) An Investigation of the Mass Balance of Oil and Gas Produced Versus Estimated Reserves Remaining within the A.W.P. Field, McMullen County, Texas. Doctoral dissertation, University of Louisiana

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

Taggart J, Granville K (2017) How We Shop: Past, Present Future. New York Times BU4

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Heymann 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Wang and Huang 2014; Heymann 2014).

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

Two authors: (Wang and Huang 2014)
Three or more authors: (Huberman et al. 2003)

About the journal

Full journal title	Ecological Research
Abbreviation	Ecol. Res.
ISSN (print)	0912-3814
ISSN (online)	1440-1703
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics