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

Kaiser J 2015 What does a disease deserve? Science 350 900–2

A journal article with 2 authors

Li J and Cheng J-X 2014 Direct visualization of de novo lipogenesis in single living cells Sci. Rep. 4 6807

A journal article with 3 authors

Borys N J, Shafran E and Lupton J M 2013 Surface plasmon delocalization in silver nanoparticle aggregates revealed by subdiffraction supercontinuum hot spots Sci. Rep. 3 2090

A journal article with 99 or more authors

Grimson A, Srivastava M, Fahey B, Woodcroft B J, Chiang H R, King N, Degnan B M, Rokhsar D S and Bartel D P 2008 Early origins and evolution of microRNAs and Piwi-interacting RNAs in animals Nature 455 1193–7

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Furmston M 2012 Powell-Smith and Furmston’s Building Contract Casebook (Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell)

An edited book

Korol A V 2014 Polarization Bremsstrahlung vol 80, ed A V Solov’yov (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer)

A chapter in an edited book

Edelglass W 2005 Levinas’s Language The Enigma of Good and Evil; The Moral Sentiment in Literature Analecta Husserliana ed A-T Tymieniecka (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands) pp 47–62

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 2017 Sharks Have Their Own Social Network, And They’re Surprisingly Resilient IFLScience Online: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/sharks-have-their-own-social-network-and-theyre-surprisingly-resilient/

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 1992 Tax Systems Modernization: Progress Mixed In Addressing Critical Success Factors (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

Diorio C A 2010 The silent scream of Medusa: Restoring, or re-storying, her voice Doctoral dissertation (Carpinteria, CA: Pacifica Graduate Institute)

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

Stellin S 2014 A Place to Stay and to Play New York Times TR5

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Kaiser 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Kaiser 2015, Li and Cheng 2014).

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

Two authors: (Li and Cheng 2014)
Three or more authors: (Grimson et al 2008)

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

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