How to format your references using the Water Science citation style

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

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Heffernan, O., 2013. The dry facts. Nature 501, S2-3.
A journal article with 2 authors
Headlam, D., Brown, M., 2007. Comment on “The geometry of musical chords.” Science 315, 330; author reply 330.
A journal article with 3 authors
Reich, D.S., Mechler, F., Victor, J.D., 2001. Independent and redundant information in nearby cortical neurons. Science 294, 2566–2568.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Aach, J., Bulyk, M.L., Church, G.M., Comander, J., Derti, A., Shendure, J., 2001. Computational comparison of two draft sequences of the human genome. Nature 409, 856–859.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Rodriguez, J., Bonne, D., 2015. Stereoselective Multiple Bond-Forming Transformations in Organic Synthesis. John Wiley & Sons, Inc, Hoboken, NJ.
An edited book
Krasińska, M., 2013. European Bison: The Nature Monograph, 2nd ed. 2013. ed. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
A chapter in an edited book
Meiss, J.-H., Schröder, W., 2008. Large-Eddy Simulation of a Generic Space Vehicle, in: Gülhan, A. (Ed.), RESPACE – Key Technologies for Reusable Space Systems: Results of a Virtual Institute Programme of the German Helmholtz-Association, 2003 – 2007, Notes on Numerical Fluid Mechanics and Multidisciplinary Design. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 40–56.

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 Water Science.

Blog post
Andrew, E., 2015. Court Orders Netherlands to Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/environment/court-orders-netherlands-cut-greenhouse-gas-emissions/ (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, 2015. Information Technology: Additional Actions and Oversight Urgently Needed to Reduce Waste and Improve Performance in Acquisitions and Operations (No. GAO-15-675T). 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
Mier, L.M., 2012. Monitoring Electron Transfer Reactions using Ultrafast UV-Visible and Infrared Spectroscopy (Doctoral dissertation). Ohio State University, Columbus, OH.

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
Lipton, E., Eder, S., Protess, B., 2017. Ethical Hazards Dot the President’s Fairways. New York Times A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Heffernan, 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Headlam and Brown, 2007; Heffernan, 2013).

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

  • Two authors: (Headlam and Brown, 2007)
  • Three or more authors: (Aach et al., 2001)

About the journal

Full journal titleWater Science
ISSN (print)1110-4929
Scope

Other styles