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

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

Kotok A 2008 Science careers. Business financing for your research Science 319 1549

A journal article with 2 authors

Hulleman C S and Harackiewicz J M 2009 Promoting interest and performance in high school science classes Science 326 1410–2

A journal article with 3 authors

Steinberger B, Sutherland R and O’Connell R J 2004 Prediction of Emperor-Hawaii seamount locations from a revised model of global plate motion and mantle flow Nature 430 167–73

A journal article with 99 or more authors

Gershengorn M C, Hardikar A A, Wei C, Geras-Raaka E, Marcus-Samuels B and Raaka B M 2004 Epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition generates proliferative human islet precursor cells Science 306 2261–4

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Gallant B J 2006 Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response Manual (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.)

An edited book

Dutt A K, Noble A G, Costa F J, Thakur S K, Thakur R and Sharma H S 2015 Spatial Diversity and Dynamics in Resources and Urban Development: Volume 1: Regional Resources (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands)

A chapter in an edited book

Girod S C 2013 How to Align Individual Goals with Institutional Goals The Academic Medicine Handbook: A Guide to Achievement and Fulfillment for Academic Faculty ed L W Roberts (New York, NY: Springer) pp 27–31

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 Research Letters.

Blog post

Davis J 2016 “Bionic Eye” Allows Blind Patients To See Again IFLScience Online: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/bionic-eye-allows-blind-patients-to-see-again/

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 1984 A Long-Term Plan Is Needed To Guide DOE and Multiprogram Laboratory Research and Development Activities (Washington, DC: 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

Simon-Owens N L 2010 Southern Virginia Higher Education Center: An exploration of factors affecting organizational leadership Doctoral dissertation (Phoenix, AZ: 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

Crow K 2001 Skip the Climbing Wall: This Start-Up Just Wants to Hang On New York Times H4

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Kotok 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Kotok 2008, Hulleman and Harackiewicz 2009).

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

Two authors: (Hulleman and Harackiewicz 2009)
Three or more authors: (Gershengorn et al 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	Environmental Research Letters
Abbreviation	Environ. Res. Lett.
ISSN (online)	1748-9326
Scope	Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment General Environmental Science Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health