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]

Sovacool B K 2012 Energy. Deploying off-grid technology to eradicate energy poverty Science 338 47–8

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Chen M S and White M C 2007 A predictably selective aliphatic C-H oxidation reaction for complex molecule synthesis Science 318 783–7

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Le Mée L, Girardeau J and Monnier C 2004 Mantle segmentation along the Oman ophiolite fossil mid-ocean ridge Nature 432 167–72

A journal article with 99 or more authors

[1]

Lazaris A, Arcidiacono S, Huang Y, Zhou J-F, Duguay F, Chretien N, Welsh E A, Soares J W and Karatzas C N 2002 Spider silk fibers spun from soluble recombinant silk produced in mammalian cells Science 295 472–6

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Larkin R F and DiTommaso M 2015 Wiley Not-for-Profit GAAP 2015 (Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd)

An edited book

[1]

Kountchev R and Nakamatsu K 2012 Advances in Reasoning-Based Image Processing Intelligent Systems: Conventional and Intelligent Paradigms vol 29 (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer)

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Rodriguez M A 2010 General-Purpose Computing on a Semantic Network Substrate Emergent Web Intelligence: Advanced Semantic Technologies Advanced Information and Knowledge Processing ed Y Badr, R Chbeir, A Abraham and A-E Hassanien (London: Springer) pp 57–102

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]

Taub B 2016 Young Human Blood Rejuvenates Old Mice 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 1988 Aviation Security: Corrective Actions Underway, but Better Inspection Guidance Still Needed (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]

Trahan M W 2015 Large-scale 20th Century Warming Identified in the East Siberian Arctic Using Tree-ring Carbon Isotope Records Doctoral dissertation ( Lafayette, LA: University of Louisiana)

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]

Brantley B 2017 A Storyteller’s Private Dystopias New York Times C1

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