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

May, M., 2013. Heart health. Nature 493, S1.

A journal article with 2 authors

Singh, S.C., Macdonald, K.C., 2009. Mantle skewness and ridge segmentation. Nature 458, E11-2; author reply E12-3.

A journal article with 3 authors

Anderson, G., Aagaard, B., Hudnut, K., 2003. Fault interactions and large complex earthquakes in the Los Angeles area. Science 302, 1946–1949.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Kosak, S.T., Skok, J.A., Medina, K.L., Riblet, R., Le Beau, M.M., Fisher, A.G., Singh, H., 2002. Subnuclear compartmentalization of immunoglobulin loci during lymphocyte development. Science 296, 158–162.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Coulson, J., 2014. Sustainable Use of Wood in Construction. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Halgamuge, S.K., Wang, L. (Eds.), 2005. Classification and Clustering for Knowledge Discovery, Studies in Computational Intelligence. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Jin, B., Chung, J.-E., 2016. Beaucre Merchandising Co. Ltd: A Successfully Internationalizing Korean Apparel Company, in: Jin, B., Cedrola, E. (Eds.), Fashion Brand Internationalization: Opportunities and Challenges. Palgrave Macmillan US, New York, NY, pp. 115–137.

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

Davis, J., 2016. Fracking Set To Take Place In England For First Time In Five Years [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/environment/fracking-set-take-place-england-first-time-five-years/ (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, 1970. Disposable Glassware for Laboratory Work (No. 092114). 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

Stephens, A.H., 2012. William Harold Fletcher (b. 1923): His life and career in music education at Oklahoma Christian University, 1950–2012 (Doctoral dissertation). University of Arizona, Tucson, 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

GEORGE GENE GUSTINES; Compiled by DAVE ITZKOFF, 2010. Motion Comic Recalls Rescuers In Holocaust. New York Times C4.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (May, 2013).
This sentence cites two references (May, 2013; Singh and Macdonald, 2009).

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

Two authors: (Singh and Macdonald, 2009)
Three or more authors: (Kosak et al., 2002)

About the journal

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