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

Staley, K., 2004. Neuroscience. Epileptic neurons go wireless. Science 305, 482–483.

A journal article with 2 authors

Dynek, J.N., Smith, S., 2004. Resolution of sister telomere association is required for progression through mitosis. Science 304, 97–100.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hasty, J., McMillen, D., Collins, J.J., 2002. Engineered gene circuits. Nature 420, 224–230.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Vartanian, J.-P., Guétard, D., Henry, M., Wain-Hobson, S., 2008. Evidence for editing of human papillomavirus DNA by APOBEC3 in benign and precancerous lesions. Science 320, 230–233.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Vakkur, N.V., Herrera, Z.J., 2013. Corporate Governance Regulation. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Marburg, S., Nolte, B. (Eds.), 2008. Computational Acoustics of Noise Propagation in Fluids - Finite and Boundary Element Methods. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Roberts{roJoint Chairman}, T.A., Cordier, J.-L., Gram, L., Tompkin, R.B., Pitt{roJoint Chairman}, J.I., Gorris, L.G.M., Swanson, K.M.J., 2005. Feeds and pet foods, in: roJoint Chairman, Cordier, J.-L., Gram, L., Tompkin, R.B., roJoint Chairman, Gorris, L.G.M., Swanson, K.M.J. (Eds.), Micro-Organisms in Foods 6: Microbial Ecology of Food Commodities. Springer US, Boston, MA, pp. 250–276.

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

Luntz, S., 2015. Typhoon Seen From Space [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL (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, 1996. VBA Information Technology Investment (No. AIMD-97-10R). 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

VanQuickenborne, T., 2010. Exploring generative change (Doctoral dissertation). Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA.

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

Vecsey, G., 2011. U.S. Coach Doesn’t Play the Superstar Card. New York Times B15.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Staley, 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Dynek and Smith, 2004; Staley, 2004).

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

Two authors: (Dynek and Smith, 2004)
Three or more authors: (Vartanian et al., 2008)

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