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

Baxter, S. From Caribbean to Clementine. Nature 2000, 403, 485.

A journal article with 2 authors

Meissner, A.; Jaenisch, R. Generation of Nuclear Transfer-Derived Pluripotent ES Cells from Cloned Cdx2-Deficient Blastocysts. Nature 2006, 439, 212–215.

A journal article with 3 authors

Banerjee, A.; Santos, W.L.; Verdine, G.L. Structure of a DNA Glycosylase Searching for Lesions. Science 2006, 311, 1153–1157.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Palacios, I.M.; Gatfield, D.; St Johnston, D.; Izaurralde, E. An EIF4AIII-Containing Complex Required for MRNA Localization and Nonsense-Mediated MRNA Decay. Nature 2004, 427, 753–757.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Goossens, F. How to Implement Market Models Using VBA; John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: Chichester, UK, 2015; ISBN 9781119065838.

An edited book

Surgical Management of Urolithiasis: Percutaneous, Shockwave and Ureteroscopy; Nakada, S.Y., Pearle, M.S., Eds.; Springer: New York, NY, 2013; ISBN 9781461469360.

A chapter in an edited book

Chen, P.; Xu, J.; Lin, Z.; Xu, D.; Mao, B.; Liu, P. A Practical Approach for Adaptive Data Structure Layout Randomization. In Computer Security -- ESORICS 2015: 20th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security, Vienna, Austria, September 21-25, 2015, Proceedings, Part I; Pernul, G., Y A Ryan, P., Weippl, E., Eds.; Lecture Notes in Computer Science; Springer International Publishing: Cham, 2015; pp. 69–89 ISBN 9783319241739.

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

Taub, B. Sleepwalkers Who Injure Themselves Don’t Feel Pain Until They Wake Up (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 Polar Satellites: NOAA Faces Challenges and Uncertainties That Could Affect the Availability of Critical Weather Data; U.S. Government Printing Office: Washington, DC, 2016;

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Boysen, J. The ESCRT Machinery, Required for Endosomal Trafficking, Is a PH-Signaling Platform. Doctoral dissertation, Columbia University: New York, NY, 2008.

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

Baker, P.; Shear, M.D. Vowing Again to Attack Opioids, Trump Faults Obama. New York Times 2017, A13.

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