LibGuides: Environmental Science Guide: Ecology Citation Style

Ecology Citation

Formatting

In Environmental Science, we use the Ecological Society of America(ESA) to format our writing and reference our citations.

ESA Paper Format Guidelines:

Times New Roman font, 12-point, double-spaced (Paper and Literature Cited).
Running head should be concise, and use as few words as possible to effectively convey the topic. Do not exceed 40 words.
All pages, tables, and figures need to be numbered
Organization of Paper:
- Title Page: Titles should be relevant, concise, and explain exactly what the paper is about. (Ex: Atlantic bluefin tuna spawn early to avoid metabolic meltdown in larvae).
- Abstract: An abstract is a short summary of your paper generally less than 250 words long.
- Key words list: You will need to include a list of “Key words” that are typically relevant to your paper. The Key word list should be a minimum of six and a max of 12 key words/phrases italicized , "Each key word should be useful as an entry point for a literature search."
- Body of Paper: This is where the content of your paper goes.
- Acknowledgements: An acknowledgments section is optional. If including this section, it must be a single paragraph and should appear at the end of the body of the text, immediately before the Literature cited.
- Literature Cited: Where you list your references.
- Tables (one table per page).
- Figure legends (on separate page preceding the first figure),
- Figures (one figure per page; label each figure, i.e., Figure 1, Figure 2 etc.),
- Appendices (If necessary).

Example: Sample paper (sourced from Journal of Ecology)

Organization of the Body of Paper: Create headings labeled and ordered as follows
- Introduction
- Methods
- Results
- Discussion
- Conclusion (If Needed)

For a full in-depth list pertained to formatting, please refer to the Manuscript Preparation Guide posted by the ESA and select "Manuscript Preparation Guide" in the drop down menu.

Citing your sources

You may be familiar with using the MLA or APA styles to provide reference to the sources you used to write your paper also known as bibliographies. The ESA is no different, with all scholarly work, you need to provide the reader with a reference to the sources you use so that the reader understands the support for your positions. Additionally, to give proper attribution to the creator of the content or idea. In a scholarly paper, you will provide your references in two ways.

In-text citation
In the body of your paper, whenever you present an idea or words of someone else (your source), you will provide a brief, “in-text” citation to that source. You may give an in-text citation to the same source multiple times in within your work, every time you present that creator’s ideas or words.
Literature Cited
The Literature Cited section immediately follows the body of your paper, for source you have cited to in-text, you will need to provide the full citation in a list called the “Literature Cited” section. In the body of your paper, you may have given the in-text citation to a source more than once. In the Literature Cited section you will only list each source once.

Sometimes when to cite or when to use quotes can be very confusing for all of us. When in doubt, it is always best to give credit to the author of the source. If you have any questions, please visit our Plagiarism Awareness guide.