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

Shen MM (2015) Cancer: The complex seeds of metastasis. Nature 520:298–299

A journal article with 2 authors

Nesbit J, Norman C (2011) 2010 Visualization Challenge. Science 331:847–856

A journal article with 3 authors

Park I-U, Peacey MW, Munafò MR (2014) Modelling the effects of subjective and objective decision making in scientific peer review. Nature 506:93–96

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Auslaender OM, Steinberg H, Yacoby A, et al (2005) Spin-charge separation and localization in one dimension. Science 308:88–92

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bauldry WC (2009) Introduction to Real Analysis. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Elwell CE, Leung TS, Harrison DK (eds) (2016) Oxygen Transport to Tissue XXXVII. Springer, New York, NY

A chapter in an edited book

Beichner D, Hagemann O (2016) Incarcerated Women: Their Situation, Their Needs and Measures for Sustainable Reintegration. In: Kury H, Redo S, Shea E (eds) Women and Children as Victims and Offenders: Background, Prevention, Reintegration: Suggestions for Succeeding Generations (Volume 2). Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 85–116

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

Taub B (2016) Happy Couples See Other People As Ugly, According To Study. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/happy-couples-see-other-people-ugly/. 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 (1992) NASA Procurement: Approach to Sharing Risk Under Certain Research and Development Contracts Is Starting to Change. 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

Hawkins JT (2017) A Private Solution to a Public Problem: Managing Hydraulic Fracturing Risks by Enhancing Private Governance through Mandatory Insurance Requirements. Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University

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

Wagner J (2017) Two Astros-Mets Games Offer Succor to Houston. New York Times SP3

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Shen 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Nesbit and Norman 2011; Shen 2015).

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

Two authors: (Nesbit and Norman 2011)
Three or more authors: (Auslaender et al. 2005)

About the journal

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