How to format your references using the Ecology and Society citation style

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

Abbott, A. 2011. Dementia: a problem for our age. Nature 475(7355):S2-4.

A journal article with 2 authors

Rieux-Laucat, F., and J.-L. Casanova. 2014. Immunology. Autoimmunity by haploinsufficiency. Science (New York, N.Y.) 345(6204):1560–1561.

A journal article with 3 authors

Videler, J. J., E. J. Stamhuis, and G. D. E. Povel. 2004. Leading-edge vortex lifts swifts. Science (New York, N.Y.) 306(5703):1960–1962.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Zhang, M., G. Zuo, J. Chen, Y. Gao, and H. Fang. 2013. Aggregated gas molecules: toxic to protein? Scientific reports 3:1660.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Heiberger, R. M. 2015. Computation for the Analysis of Designed Experiments. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Snyder, L., editor. 2007. Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Ethics, the Patient, and the Physician. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ.

A chapter in an edited book

Umber, A., I. S. Bajwa, and M. Asif Naeem. 2011. NL-Based Automated Software Requirements Elicitation and Specification. Pages 30–39 in A. Abraham, J. Lloret Mauri, J. F. Buford, J. Suzuki, and S. M. Thampi, editors. Advances in Computing and Communications: First International Conference, ACC 2011, Kochi, India, July 22-24, 2011. Proceedings, Part II. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

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 Ecology and Society.

Blog post

Luntz, S. 2015, February 8. Stem Cells Treat Brain Damage Caused By Cancer Therapy. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/stem-cells-treat-brain-injuries/

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. 1974. Tools and Techniques for Improving the Efficiency of Federal Automatic Data Processing Operation. 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

Patra, P. 2009. Image scaling with three different interpolation techniques and their comparisons. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Kelly, M. 1992, November 5. The Winners Shift Gears: What Now? New York Times:B3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Abbott 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Abbott 2011, Rieux-Laucat and Casanova 2014).

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

Two authors: (Rieux-Laucat and Casanova 2014)
Three or more authors: (Zhang et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Ecology and Society
Abbreviation	Conserv. Ecol.
ISSN (print)	1195-5449
Scope	Nature and Landscape Conservation