How to format your references using the Spectroscopy Letters citation style

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

Smaglik, P. Europe goes back to basics. Nature 2003, 426(6964), 365.

A journal article with 2 authors

Caruthers, M.; Wells, R. Retrospective. Har Gobind Khorana (1922-2011). Science (New York, N.Y.) 2011, 334(6062), 1511.

A journal article with 3 authors

Xia, X.-M.; Zeng, X.; Lingle, C.J. Multiple regulatory sites in large-conductance calcium-activated potassium channels. Nature 2002, 418(6900), 880–884.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Da Costa Dias, B.; Jovanovic, K.; Gonsalves, D.; Moodley, K.; Reusch, U.; Knackmuss, S.; et al. Anti-LRP/LR specific antibody IgG1-iS18 and knock-down of LRP/LR by shRNAs rescue cells from Aβ42 induced cytotoxicity. Scientific reports 2013, 3, 2702.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

da Silva, L.S.; Simões, R.; Gervásio, H. Design of Steel Structures; Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA: Weinheim, Germany, 2016.

An edited book

Molinari, E. Clinical Psychology and Heart Disease; G. Parati, A. Compare, Eds.; Springer: Milano, 2006.

A chapter in an edited book

Piepenbrock, A.; Kappler, A. Humic Substances and Extracellular Electron Transfer. In Microbial Metal Respiration: From Geochemistry to Potential Applications; J. Gescher, A. Kappler, Eds.; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2012, 107–128.

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 Spectroscopy Letters.

Blog post

Andrew, E. Meet Five Of The UK’s Most Poisonous Plants. IFLScience: 2014, https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/meet-five-uk-s-most-poisonous-plants/ [Oct 30 2018].

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 Intermodal Transportation: A Variety of Factors Influence Airport-Intercity Passenger Rail Connectivity; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 2013.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

An, D. Improved Flotation of Bastnaesite and Chalcopyrite. [Doctoral dissertation] University of Arizona: Tucson, AZ, 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

Kishkovsky, S. Restructuring At the Bolshoi Costs Director His Position; 2000, E1.

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	Spectroscopy Letters
Abbreviation	Spectrosc. Lett.
ISSN (print)	0038-7010
ISSN (online)	1532-2289
Scope	Analytical Chemistry Spectroscopy Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics