How to format your references using the eLife citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for eLife. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Nowack B. 2010. Chemistry. Nanosilver revisited downstream. Science 330:1054–1055.

A journal article with 2 authors

Peña JL, Konishi M. 2001. Auditory spatial receptive fields created by multiplication. Science 292:249–252.

A journal article with 3 authors

Aggarwal PK, Basu AR, Kulkarni KM. 2003. Comment on “Arsenic Mobility and Groundwater Extraction in Bangladesh” (I). Science 300:584; author reply 584.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Michel LS, Liberal V, Chatterjee A, Kirchwegger R, Pasche B, Gerald W, Dobles M, Sorger PK, Murty VV, Benezra R. 2001. MAD2 haplo-insufficiency causes premature anaphase and chromosome instability in mammalian cells. Nature 409:355–359.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

De Spiegeleer J, Schoutens W, Van Hulle C. 2014. The Handbook of Hybrid Securities. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Tryfonas T, Askoxylakis I, editors. 2014. Human Aspects of Information Security, Privacy, and Trust: Second International Conference, HAS 2014, Held as Part of HCI International 2014, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, June 22-27, 2014. Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Andrews B, Hopper C. 2011. Evolution of the Curvature In: Hopper C, editor. The Ricci Flow in Riemannian Geometry: A Complete Proof of the Differentiable 1/4-Pinching Sphere Theorem, Lecture Notes in Mathematics. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. pp. 63–82.

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 eLife.

Blog post

Taub B. 2016. Pre-Aztec Skull With Stone-Encrusted Teeth Discovered At Ancient City In Mexico. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/pre-aztec-skull-with-stone-encrusted-teeth-discovered-ancient-city-mexico/

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. 1997. Chief Information Officers: Ensuring Strong Leadership and an Effective Council (No. T-AIMD-98-22). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Guedez A. 2017. Developing Correlations for Velocity Models in Vertical Transverse Isotropic Media: Bakken Case Study (Doctoral dissertation). Lafayette, LA: University of Louisiana.

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

Koblin J. 2017. Apple’s First Big TV Move: A Spielberg Series Reboot. New York Times B3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Nowack, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Nowack, 2010; Peña and Konishi, 2001).

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

Two authors: (Peña and Konishi, 2001)
Three or more authors: (Michel et al., 2001)

About the journal

Full journal title	eLife
ISSN (online)	2050-084X
Scope