How to format your references using the Ecology Letters citation style

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

Blau, H.M. (2002). A twist of fate. Nature, 419, 437.

A journal article with 2 authors

O’Neil, D.D. & Gillikin, D.P. (2014). Do freshwater mussel shells record road-salt pollution? Sci. Rep., 4, 7168.

A journal article with 3 authors

Rubin, K.H., Fletcher, C.H., 3rd & Sherman, C. (2000). Fossiliferous Lana’i deposits formed by multiple events rather than a single giant tsunami. Nature, 408, 675–681.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Yen, H.-C.S., Xu, Q., Chou, D.M., Zhao, Z. & Elledge, S.J. (2008). Global protein stability profiling in mammalian cells. Science, 322, 918–923.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Anderson, D. (2007). TKO Hiring! John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Cantone, G. & Marchesi, M. (Eds.). (2014). Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming: 15th International Conference, XP 2014, Rome, Italy, May 26-30, 2014. Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

Tonon, G. & de la Vega, L.R. (2014). The Importance of Friendship in the Construction of Positive Nations. In: Positive Nations and Communities: Collective, Qualitative and Cultural-Sensitive Processes in Positive Psychology, Cross-Cultural Advancements in Positive Psychology (eds. Águeda Marujo, H. & Neto, L.M.). Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, pp. 65–77.

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 Letters.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015). NASA’s HiRISE Camera Shows The Frosty Valleys Of Mars. IFLScience. Available at: https://www.iflscience.com/space/nasas-hirise-camera-shows-frosty-plains-mars/. Last accessed 30 October 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. (1988). Pell Grants: Who Receives Them and What Would Larger Grants Cost? ( No. HRD-88-106BR). 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

Shamsai, M. (2006). Prefabricated Cage System for Reinforcing Concrete Members. Doctoral dissertation. Ohio State University, Columbus, OH.

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

Pear, R. & Pilon, M. (2013). Auto Racetrack Owners Keep Coveted Tax Break. New York Times, A13.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Blau 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Blau 2002; O’Neil & Gillikin 2014).

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

Two authors: (O’Neil & Gillikin 2014)
Three or more authors: (Yen et al. 2008)

About the journal

Full journal title	Ecology Letters
Abbreviation	Ecol. Lett.
ISSN (print)	1461-023X
ISSN (online)	1461-0248
Scope	Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics