FW 317: Biology of Mammals

Resources for style & format:

 Style and Citation Guides

University of Chicago Press. 1993.  The Chicago manual of style. 14th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Examples from: Instructions  to Authors in Journal of Mammalogy 

Journal Article:
BROWN, J. S., AND N. B. PAVLOVIC. 1992a. Evolution in heterogeneous environments: effects of migration on habitat specialization. Evolutionary Ecology 6:360–382

Journal article with multiple authors:
NEVO, E., V. SIMOSEN, AND A. R. TEMPLETON. In press. Starch gel electrophoresis of enzymes—a compilation of recipes. Biochemical Genetics.

Book:
ANDERSON, D. A., AND W. A. SMITH. 1976. Forests and forestry. 2nd ed. Interstate Printers and Publishers, Inc., Danville, Illinois 3:1–798.

HALL, E. R. 1981. The mammals of North America. 2nd ed. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York 1:1–600 + 90. [OR …2:601–1181 + 90.]

NEAL, E. G., AND C. CHEESEMAN. 1996. Badgers. Poyser Natural History, London, United Kingdom.

Chapter in a Book (also use for a paper in a conference proceeding):
PATTON, J. L., ET AL. 1977. Optimal habitat selection in two-species competitive systems. Pp. 282–293 in Population ecology (U. Halbach and J. Jacobs, eds.). Gustav Fischer Verlag, Stuttgart, West Germany.

Technical Report:
GOODWIN, J. G., JR., AND C. R. HUNGERFORD. 1979. Rodent population densities and food habitats in Arizona ponderosa pine forests. United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service,
Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station, Research Paper RM-214:1–12.

Thesis or Dissertation:
STEWART, P. D. 1997. The social behaviour of the European badger, Meles meles. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.

Software:
SAS INSTITUTE INC. 1990. SAS/STAT user's guide. Release 6.03. SAS Institute Inc., Cary, North Carolina.

Websites (use the article formats for online articles):
JAFFE, J.S. and NIERENBERG, W.A. 1997.  Report to the Sloan Foundation: Technology Workshopfor the Census of the Fishes  Oct 16-17, 1997.  Available: http://core.ssc.erc.msstate.edu/censtech.html.  Accessed: September 25, 2001.

Keyword searching:

• Most databases are very literal.
• If you search for "salmon" but an article only refers to the term "anadromous fish" you will not get that article.
• So, think about your topic and generate useful search terms is your first step.

Controlled vocabularies:

• Some databases (e.g. Biosis and library catalogs) have a "controlled vocabulary" (a thesaurus).
• If available, this is database feature is useful because it provides a consistent way to retrieve references to books and articles on a topic that may have many terms all referring to the same concept.

Combine terms using the Boolean Operators AND/OR /NOT:

• AND narrows your search (fewer results)
• OR broadens your search (more results)
• NOT removes a word that connotes the wrong context (unpredictable results) 
• If you have words that express different concepts use an AND
• If you need a variety of words to get at the same concept, use an OR

Truncation or Wildcards:

• Most databases allow for a symbol (often * ) to be used at the end of a word stem so that you don't have to type all the variant endings of that word.
• This is known as a truncation symbol.
• The symbols used for truncation may be different from one database to another.
• Use the database's help menu to see what truncation symbol to use.
  (Example: fish* will retrieve fish, fishes, fisheries, etc.)