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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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, J.P.: Neurodegenerative diseases: G-quadruplex poses quadruple threat. Nature. 507, 175–177 (2014)

A journal article with 2 authors

Lowry, A.R., Pérez-Gussinyé, M.: The role of crustal quartz in controlling Cordilleran deformation. Nature. 471, 353–357 (2011)

A journal article with 3 authors

Mariani, F.V., Ahn, C.P., Martin, G.R.: Genetic evidence that FGFs have an instructive role in limb proximal-distal patterning. Nature. 453, 401–405 (2008)

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Velliste, M., Perel, S., Spalding, M.C., Whitford, A.S., Schwartz, A.B.: Cortical control of a prosthetic arm for self-feeding. Nature. 453, 1098–1101 (2008)

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wu, Z.: Software VNA and Microwave Network Design and Characterisation. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK (2007)

An edited book

Dellacherie, C.: Inverse M-Matrices and Ultrametric Matrices. Springer International Publishing, Cham (2014)

A chapter in an edited book

De Padova, M.P., Tosti, A.: Pyruvic Acid. In: Tosti, A., Grimes, P.E., and De Padova, M.P. (eds.) Color Atlas of Chemical Peels. pp. 25–32. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg (2012)

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

Andrew, E.: What A Tiny Micrometeorite From The Pilbara Can Tell Us About The Ancient Sky, https://www.iflscience.com/space/what-tiny-micrometeorite-pilbara-can-tell-us-about-ancient-sky/

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: GSA: Causes of Delay in the Federal Communications Commission Move to the Portals II Building. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC (1998)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Bustos, I.: Backpacking Through My Suburban Barrio: Eco-Latina Diaries, (2017)

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.: Scouting Report, (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