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

Stace A (2001) Chemistry. Cluster solutions. Science 294:1292–1293

A journal article with 2 authors

Katan MB, de Roos NM (2003) Public health. Toward evidence-based health claims for foods. Science 299:206–207

A journal article with 3 authors

Ruthazer ES, Akerman CJ, Cline HT (2003) Control of axon branch dynamics by correlated activity in vivo. Science 301:66–70

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Lin L, Zhu HX, Jiang XM, et al (2014) Coupled ferroelectric polarization and magnetization in spinel FeCr2S4. Sci Rep 4:6530

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Huddleston R (2010) Android® Fully Loaded. Wiley Publishing, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

Ritacco LE, Milano FE, Chao E (eds) (2016) Computer-Assisted Musculoskeletal Surgery: Thinking and Executing in 3D, 1st ed. 2016. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Molnar DS, Sirois FM, Methot-Jones T (2016) Trying to Be Perfect in an Imperfect World: Examining the Role of Perfectionism in the Context of Chronic Illness. In: Sirois FM, Molnar DS (eds) Perfectionism, Health, and Well-Being. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp 69–99

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

Andrews R (2016) Stunning Satellite Images Reveal The Story Of Earth’s Surface Water. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/stunning-satellite-images-reveal-story-earths-surface-water/. 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 (2015) DHS IT Contracting: Steps Taken to Enhance EAGLE II Small Business Opportunities, but Better Assessment Data Needed. 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

Kress DM (2008) A phenomenological study exploring executive coaching: Understanding perceptions of self-awareness and leadership behavior changes. Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix

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

Billard M (2010) And They’ll All Go Looking Good. New York Times E5

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Stace 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Stace 2001; Katan and de Roos 2003).

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

Two authors: (Katan and de Roos 2003)
Three or more authors: (Lin et al. 2014)

About the journal

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

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