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
Tooze, S. A. (2001). Cell biology. GGAs tie up the loose ends. Science (New York, N.Y.), 292(5522), 1663–1665.
A journal article with 2 authors
Lankau, R. A., & Strauss, S. Y. (2007). Mutual feedbacks maintain both genetic and species diversity in a plant community. Science (New York, N.Y.), 317(5844), 1561–1563.
A journal article with 3 authors
Bouchard, M. J., Wang, L. H., & Schneider, R. J. (2001). Calcium signaling by HBx protein in hepatitis B virus DNA replication. Science (New York, N.Y.), 294(5550), 2376–2378.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Somers, C. M., McCarry, B. E., Malek, F., & Quinn, J. S. (2004). Reduction of particulate air pollution lowers the risk of heritable mutations in mice. Science (New York, N.Y.), 304(5673), 1008–1010.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Alacoque, J. C. (2012). Direct Eigen Control for Induction Machines and Synchronous Motors. A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An edited book
Rauh, A., & Senkel, L. (Eds.). (2016). Variable-Structure Approaches: Analysis, Simulation, Robust Control and Estimation of Uncertain Dynamic Processes. Springer International Publishing.
A chapter in an edited book
Vazquez, R., & Krstic, M. (2008). 2D Navier–Stokes Channel Flow: Boundary Estimation. In M. Krstic (Ed.), Control of Turbulent and Magnetohydrodynamic Channel Flows: Boundary Stabilization and State Estimation (pp. 103–114). Birkhäuser.

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
Andrew, E. (2015, August 20). So You Think You Have IBS, Coeliac Disease Or Crohn’s? Here’s What It Might Mean For You. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/so-you-think-you-have-ibs-coeliac-disease-or-crohn-s-here-s-what-it-might-mean/

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. (1998). FAA Computer Systems: Limited Progress on Year 2000 Issue Increases Risk Dramatically (AIMD-98-45). 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
Sinha, R. (2017). An Integrated Development Environment for the Clara Constraint-Programming Language [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
Greenhouse, L. (2006, October 21). Supreme Court Allows Arizona To Use New Voter-ID Procedure. New York Times, A10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Tooze, 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Lankau & Strauss, 2007; Tooze, 2001).

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

  • Two authors: (Lankau & Strauss, 2007)
  • Three authors: (Bouchard et al., 2001)
  • 6 or more authors: (Somers et al., 2004)

About the journal

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

Other styles