How to format your references using the Science of the Total Environment citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Science of the Total Environment. 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	Download the output style file
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

Mooers, A.O., 2014. Biodiversity: Supply and demand. Nature 509, 171–172.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ouyang, M., Awschalom, D.D., 2003. Coherent spin transfer between molecularly bridged quantum dots. Science 301, 1074–1078.

A journal article with 3 authors

Alexander, M.H., Capecchi, G., Werner, H.-J., 2002. Theoretical study of the validity of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation in the Cl + H2 --> HCl + H reaction. Science 296, 715–718.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Alarico, S., Costa, M., Sousa, M.S., Maranha, A., Lourenço, E.C., Faria, T.Q., Ventura, M.R., Empadinhas, N., 2014. Mycobacterium hassiacum recovers from nitrogen starvation with up-regulation of a novel glucosylglycerate hydrolase and depletion of the accumulated glucosylglycerate. Sci. Rep. 4, 6766.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Cayuela Valencia, R., 2013. The Future of the Chemical Industry by 2050. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany.

An edited book

Haddar, M., Romdhane, L., Louati, J., Ben Amara, A. (Eds.), 2013. Design and Modeling of Mechanical Systems: Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference Design and Modeling of Mechanical Systems, CMSM´2013, Djerba, Tunisia, March 25-27, 2013, Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Moltó, A., Orihuela, J., Troyanski, S., Valdivia, M., 2009. Some Applications, in: Orihuela, J., Troyanski, S., Valdivia, M. (Eds.), A Nonlinear Transfer Technique for Renorming, Lecture Notes in Mathematics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 101–116.

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 Science of the Total Environment.

Blog post

Andrews, R., 2016. The Ridiculously Powerful Claws Of The Mantis Shrimp Have A Secret Armor Pattern [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/ridiculously-powerful-claws-mantis-shrimp-secret-armor-pattern/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 2007. Passenger Rail Security: Federal Strategy and Enhanced Coordination Needed to Prioritize and Guide Security Efforts (No. GAO-07-459T). U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Konzem, S.R., 2017. Tenability and Computability of Generalized Pólya Urns (Doctoral dissertation). George Washington University, Washington, DC.

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

Kelly, I., 2004. Hamburger Helper. New York Times A23.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Mooers, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Mooers, 2014; Ouyang and Awschalom, 2003).

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

Two authors: (Ouyang and Awschalom, 2003)
Three or more authors: (Alarico et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Science of the Total Environment
Abbreviation	Sci. Total Environ.
ISSN (print)	0048-9697
Scope	Environmental Chemistry Environmental Engineering Pollution Waste Management and Disposal