How to format your references using the Environmental Chemistry Letters citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Environmental Chemistry Letters. 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

Bourzac K (2014) Microbiome: the bacterial tightrope. Nature 516:S14-6

A journal article with 2 authors

Vandermeer J, Perfecto I (2006) A keystone mutualism drives pattern in a power function. Science 311:1000–1002

A journal article with 3 authors

Meng F, McGrath KP, Hoveyda AH (2014) Multifunctional organoboron compounds for scalable natural product synthesis. Nature 513:367–374

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Hanlon RT, Naud M-J, Shaw PW, Havenhand JN (2005) Behavioural ecology: transient sexual mimicry leads to fertilization. Nature 433:212

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kramer H (2013) Angewandte Baudynamik. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany

An edited book

Di Natale M (2012) Understanding and Using the Controller Area Network Communication Protocol: Theory and Practice. Springer, New York, NY

A chapter in an edited book

Valcke M (2013) “Evidence-Based Teaching, Evidence-Based Teacher Education” (Quality of Teachers and Quality of Teacher Education). In: Zhu X, Zeichner K (eds) Preparing Teachers for the 21st Century. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 53–66

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 Environmental Chemistry Letters.

Blog post

Andrew E (2015) Protein Treatment Staves Off Alzheimer’s Disease Symptoms. In: IFLScience. 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 (1974) Improvement Needed In Documenting Computer Systems. 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

Bavkar IN (2017) In-Node Vehicle Classification and Identification. 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

Crow K (2002) A Smaller Garage Still Looms Large to Some. New York Times 146

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bourzac 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Vandermeer and Perfecto 2006; Bourzac 2014).

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

Two authors: (Vandermeer and Perfecto 2006)
Three or more authors: (Hanlon et al. 2005)

About the journal

Full journal title	Environmental Chemistry Letters
Abbreviation	Environ. Chem. Lett.
ISSN (print)	1610-3653
ISSN (online)	1610-3661
Scope	Environmental Chemistry