How to format your references using the Empirical Software Engineering citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Empirical Software Engineering. 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

Willyard C (2011) Lifestyle: Breaking the cancer habit. Nature 471:S16-7

A journal article with 2 authors

Gilboa L, Lehmann R (2006) Soma-germline interactions coordinate homeostasis and growth in the Drosophila gonad. Nature 443:97–100

A journal article with 3 authors

Hurst LD, Feil EJ, Rocha EPC (2006) Protein evolution: causes of trends in amino-acid gain and loss. Nature 442:E11-2; discussion E12

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Ge X-T, Lei P, Wang H-C, et al (2014) miR-21 improves the neurological outcome after traumatic brain injury in rats. Sci Rep 4:6718

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Matthews C (1998) A Practical Guide to Engineering Failure Investigation. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Wimmer MA, Scholl J, Grönlund Å (eds) (2007) Electronic Government: 6th International Conference, EGOV 2007, Regensburg, Germany, September 3-7, 2007. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Mulvey JM, Erkan HG (2009) An Enterprise Risk Management Model for Supply Chains. In: Chaovalitwongse W, Furman KC, Pardalos PM (eds) Optimization and Logistics Challenges in the Enterprise. Springer US, Boston, MA, pp 177–189

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 Empirical Software Engineering.

Blog post

Davis J (2016) 1 In 10 South African Children May Have A Natural Defense Against AIDS. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/1-in-10-south-african-children-may-have-a-natural-defense-against-aids/. Accessed 30 Oct 2018

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 (1977) Globe Safety Product’s Inquiry Regarding Firefighters Breathing Apparatus Developed for NASA by Scott Aviation Company. 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

Harrison AB (2012) Knowing the familiar. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach

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

Kelly M (1992) THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: Political Memo; Those Chicken Georges And What They Mean. New York Times A21

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Willyard 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Gilboa and Lehmann 2006; Willyard 2011).

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

Two authors: (Gilboa and Lehmann 2006)
Three or more authors: (Ge et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Empirical Software Engineering
Abbreviation	Empir. Softw. Eng.
ISSN (print)	1382-3256
ISSN (online)	1573-7616
Scope	Software