How to format your references using the Ecology citation style

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

Smith, C. 2004. Running interference on the genome. Nature 428:225.

A journal article with 2 authors

Inamdar, A. A., and J. W. Bennett. 2014. A common fungal volatile organic compound induces a nitric oxide mediated inflammatory response in Drosophila melanogaster. Scientific reports 4:3833.

A journal article with 3 authors

Jan, C. H., C. C. Williams, and J. S. Weissman. 2014. Principles of ER cotranslational translocation revealed by proximity-specific ribosome profiling. Science (New York, N.Y.) 346:1257521.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Jones, T. D., J. O. Farlow, J. A. Ruben, D. M. Henderson, and W. J. Hillenius. 2000. Cursoriality in bipedal archosaurs. Nature 406:716–718.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Simon, L., and J. Ospina. 2015. Closed-Form Solutions for Drug Transport through Controlled-Release Devices in Two and Three Dimensions. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Nambiar, R., and M. Poess, editors. 2016. Performance Evaluation and Benchmarking: Traditional to Big Data to Internet of Things: 7th TPC Technology Conference, TPCTC 2015, Kohala Coast, HI, USA, August 31 – September 4, 2015. Revised Selected Papers. 1st ed. 2016. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

Amadori, D., and L. Gosse. 2015. Entropy Dissipation and Comparison with Lyapunov Estimates. Pages 81–90 in L. Gosse, editor. Error Estimates for Well-Balanced Schemes on Simple Balance Laws: One-Dimensional Position-Dependent Models. 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 Ecology.

Blog post

Luntz, S. 2017, February 24. People With Chronic Fatigue Have A Defective Channel In Immune System Cells. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/people-with-chronic-fatigue-have-a-defective-channel-in-immune-system-cells/.

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. 1976. Assistance Provided for the Construction of Higher Education Academic Facilities. 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

Klooster, E. C.-R. 2010. Identifying differences in student traditionalities of remedial math students, adjusted for efficacy. Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ.

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

Bennhold, K., and M. J. de la MERCED. 2017, October 3. Uber Leader, in Visit to London, Appeals to Regain Operating License. New York Times:B6.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Smith 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Smith 2004, Inamdar and Bennett 2014).

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

Two authors: (Inamdar and Bennett 2014)
Three or more authors: (Jones et al. 2000)

About the journal

Full journal title	Ecology
Abbreviation	Ecology
ISSN (print)	0012-9658
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics