How to format your references using the English for Specific Purposes citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for English for Specific Purposes. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Hovnanian, J. S. (2000). Let Armenia show why it’s the place for Sesame. Nature, 405(6786), 508.
A journal article with 2 authors
Tikhonov, V. I., & Volkov, A. A. (2002). Separation of water into its ortho and para isomers. Science (New York, N.Y.), 296(5577), 2363.
A journal article with 3 authors
Roberts, J. M., Wheeler, A. J., & Freiwald, A. (2006). Reefs of the deep: the biology and geology of cold-water coral ecosystems. Science (New York, N.Y.), 312(5773), 543–547.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Jakobsen, B., Poulsen, H. F., Lienert, U., Almer, J., Shastri, S. D., Sørensen, H. O., Gundlach, C., & Pantleon, W. (2006). Formation and subdivision of deformation structures during plastic deformation. Science (New York, N.Y.), 312(5775), 889–892.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Akcoglu, M. A., Bartha, P. F. A., & Ha, D. M. (2009). Analysis in Vector Spaces. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Vanotti, A. (2009). Il paniere degli alimenti: Come nutrirsi in modo sano e gustoso (M. Speranza, Ed.). Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Sabharwal, N., & Wadhwa, M. (2014). Nodes. In M. Wadhwa (Ed.), Automation through Chef Opscode (pp. 49–60). Apress.

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 English for Specific Purposes.

Blog post
Hale, T. (2016, May 18). This Optical Illusion Of A Brick Wall Is Really Driving The Internet Nuts. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/optical-illusion-brick-wall-really-annoying-people/

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. (1985). Implementation of the Small Business Innovation Development Act of 1982 (128369). 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
Solomon, R. B. (2017). Analysis of Emergency Responder Preparedness to Active Shooter Incidents in Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles, and Riverside Counties [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
La GORCE, T. (2017, May 19). He Arrived as Reba McEntire. That Seemed to Work. New York Times, ST13.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Hovnanian, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Hovnanian, 2000; Tikhonov & Volkov, 2002).

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

  • Two authors: (Tikhonov & Volkov, 2002)
  • Three authors: (Roberts et al., 2006)
  • 6 or more authors: (Jakobsen et al., 2006)

About the journal

Full journal titleEnglish for Specific Purposes
ISSN (print)0889-4906
Scope

Other styles