How to format your references using the EPL citation style

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

[1]

Kump L R 2002 Reducing uncertainty about carbon dioxide as a climate driver Nature 419 188–90

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Kaplinsky N J and Barton M K 2004 Plant biology. Plant acupuncture: sticking PINs in the right places Science 306 822–3

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Liang Y, Wu D and Fu R 2013 Carbon microfibers with hierarchical porous structure from electrospun fiber-like natural biopolymer Sci. Rep. 3 1119

A journal article with 99 or more authors

[1]

Dundas C M, Bramson A M, Ojha L, Wray J J, Mellon M T, Byrne S, McEwen A S, Putzig N E, Viola D, Sutton S, Clark E and Holt J W 2018 Exposed subsurface ice sheets in the Martian mid-latitudes Science 359 199–201

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Center for Chemical Process Safety 1995 Guidelines for Process Safety Documentation (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.)

An edited book

[1]

Mossakowski T and Kreowski H-J 2012 Recent Trends in Algebraic Development Techniques: 20th International Workshop, WADT 2010, Etelsen, Germany, July 1-4, 2010, Revised Selected Papers vol 7137 (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer)

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

von Oertzen W and Milin M 2014 Covalent Binding on the Femtometer Scale: Nuclear Molecules Clusters in Nuclei, Volume 3 Lecture Notes in Physics ed C Beck (Cham: Springer International Publishing) pp 147–82

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 EPL.

Blog post

[1]

Hale T 2016 The White Sand Dunes Of New Mexico Are A Weird And Wonderful Place IFLScience

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

[1]

Government Accountability Office 1993 Federally Funded Research: Controlling Inappropriate Access to Research Results (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

[1]

Monteiro K R 2012 An experimental study of corrective feedback on synchronous oral computer-mediated communication Doctoral dissertation (Long Beach, CA: 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

[1]

Rashbaum W K, Craig S and Kaplan T 2015 Inquiry Is Said to Aim at Chief of State Senate New York Times A1

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	EPL
Abbreviation	EPL
ISSN (print)	0295-5075
ISSN (online)	1286-4854
Scope	General Physics and Astronomy