How to format your references using the Sustainability citation style

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

Gong, P. China Needs No Foreign Help to Feed Itself. Nature 2011, 474, 7.

A journal article with 2 authors

Pandey, A.; Mann, M. Proteomics to Study Genes and Genomes. Nature 2000, 405, 837–846.

A journal article with 3 authors

Lawrence, T.; Hageman, T.; Balkwill, F. Cancer. Sex, Cytokines, and Cancer. Science 2007, 317, 51–52.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Jaswal, S.S.; Sohl, J.L.; Davis, J.H.; Agard, D.A. Energetic Landscape of Alpha-Lytic Protease Optimizes Longevity through Kinetic Stability. Nature 2002, 415, 343–346.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Jamison, D.C. Perl Programming for Biologists; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.: Hoboken, NJ, 2005; ISBN 9780471722748.

An edited book

Advances in Electronic Engineering, Communication and Management Vol.2: Proceedings of 2011 International Conference on Electronic Engineering, Communication and Management (EECM 2011), Held on December 24–25, 2011, Beijing, China; Jin, D., Lin, S., Eds.; Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering; Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2012; Vol. 140; ISBN 9783642272950.

A chapter in an edited book

Colombo, G.F.; Dragoni, M. The Legal Protection of Software in Japan—An Original Model? In Law, Development and Innovation; Bellantuono, G., Lara, F.T., Eds.; Springer International Publishing: Cham, 2016; pp. 67–88 ISBN 9783319133102.

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 Sustainability.

Blog post

Andrew, E. China Develops World’s First Hydrogen-Powered Tram (accessed on 30 October 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 District of Columbia Public Schools: Enrollment Count Still Appears Vulnerable to Errors; 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

Thomas Hurford, C.E. “In His Arm the Scar”: Medicine, Race, and the Social Implications of the 1721 Inoculation Controversy on Boston. Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University: Columbus, OH, 2010.

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

Wagner, J. Mets Put Another Starter On the D.L. New York Times 2017, B11.

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	Sustainability
Abbreviation	Sustainability
ISSN (online)	2071-1050
Scope	Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law Geography, Planning and Development