How to format your references using the ERA Forum citation style

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

Taylor, G.: Astrophysics: A tight duo in a trio of black holes. Nature. 511, 35–37 (2014)

A journal article with 2 authors

De Angelis, H., Skvarca, P.: Glacier surge after ice shelf collapse. Science. 299, 1560–1562 (2003)

A journal article with 3 authors

Abundo, C., Monterola, C., Legara, E.F.: Criticality of forcing directions on the fragmentation and resilience of grid networks. Sci. Rep. 4, 6195 (2014)

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Ahn, H.S., Kim, J.M., Park, C., Jang, J.-W., Lee, J.S., Kim, H., Kaviany, M., Kim, M.H.: A novel role of three dimensional graphene foam to prevent heater failure during boiling. Sci. Rep. 3, 1960 (2013)

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hobkirk, J.A., Gill, D.S., Jones, S.P., Hemmings, K.W., Bassi, G.S., O’Donnell, A.L., Goodman, J.R.: Hypodontia. John Wiley & Sons Ltd., West Sussex, UK (2010)

An edited book

Reichenbach, A.: Müller Cells in the Healthy and Diseased Retina. Springer, New York, NY (2010)

A chapter in an edited book

Crowe, M.L., Rychtář, J., Rueppell, O., Chhetri, M., Remington, D.L., Gupta, S.N.: Proving the “Proof”: Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Research Positively Impacts Students. In: Rychtář, J., Gupta, S., Shivaji, R., and Chhetri, M. (eds.) Topics from the 8th Annual UNCG Regional Mathematics and Statistics Conference. pp. 25–29. Springer, New York, NY (2013)

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 ERA Forum.

Blog post

Andrews, R.: Extremely Messy Tardigrade Sex Has Been Filmed For The First Time, https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/extremely-messy-tardigrade-sex-filmed-first-time/

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: Tax Administration: Achieving Business and Technical Goals In Tax Systems Modernization. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC (1993)

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Zaghdoun, E.: Entre lettres et portraits: Madame Du Deffand, auteur?, (2009)

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.: Framing a Statement, (2010)

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	ERA Forum
ISSN (print)	1612-3093
ISSN (online)	1863-9038
Scope	Law Political Science and International Relations