How to format your references using the Economics Letters citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Economics 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 references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles 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

Macilwain, C., 2000. Charm, not tact, aided pioneer in fight for physics. Nature 403, 586–587.

A journal article with 2 authors

Wang, J., Genack, A.Z., 2011. Transport through modes in random media. Nature 471, 345–348.

A journal article with 3 authors

Logvenov, G., Gozar, A., Bozovic, I., 2009. High-temperature superconductivity in a single copper-oxygen plane. Science 326, 699–702.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Tsao, D.Y., Freiwald, W.A., Tootell, R.B.H., Livingstone, M.S., 2006. A cortical region consisting entirely of face-selective cells. Science 311, 670–674.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bender, H.F., 2002. Das Gefahrstoffbuch. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, FRG.

An edited book

Wang, W. (Ed.), 2015. Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Mechatronics and Automatic Control, Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

Sanna, A., Monni, G., 2015. Recovery and Reuse of the Architectural and Urban Heritage of Carbonia, a 20th-Century Company Town. Materials for a Handbook, in: Toniolo, L., Boriani, M., Guidi, G. (Eds.), Built Heritage: Monitoring Conservation Management, Research for Development. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 55–67.

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 Economics Letters.

Blog post

Andrew, E., 2014. Scientists Regenerate Living Organs For The First Time [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/scientists-regenerate-living-organs-first-time/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1989. Aircraft Noise: Eight Airports’ Efforts to Mitigate Noise (No. RCED-89-189). 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

Caraballo-Cole, T., 2012. Mindfulness-based mental health services for single mothers: A grant proposal (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

Poniewozik, J., 2017. Selling Us a Better Vision of Ourselves. New York Times B1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Macilwain, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Macilwain, 2000; Wang and Genack, 2011).

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

Two authors: (Wang and Genack, 2011)
Three or more authors: (Tsao et al., 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	Economics Letters
Abbreviation	Econ. Lett.
ISSN (print)	0165-1765
Scope	Economics and Econometrics Finance