How to format your references using the Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Current Opinion in Environmental 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Grenier IA: Gamma-ray astronomy. A needle in a cosmic haystack. Nature 2000, 404:344–345.

A journal article with 2 authors

Zaki N, Mora A: A comparative analysis of computational approaches and algorithms for protein subcomplex identification. Sci Rep 2014, 4:4262.

A journal article with 3 authors

Gray HM, Gray K, Wegner DM: Dimensions of mind perception. Science 2007, 315:619.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Sang Y, Wang B, Wang Q, Zhao G, Guo P: Insights into the electrocatalysis of nitrobenzene using chemically-modified carbon nanotube electrodes. Sci Rep 2014, 4:6321.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Sinaiski EG: Hydromechanics. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA; 2011.

An edited book

Ytrehus Ø (Ed): Coding and Cryptography: International Workshop, WCC 2005, Bergen, Norway, March 14-18, 2005. Revised Selected Papers. Springer; 2006.

A chapter in an edited book

Mishra MK, Islam SKH, Biswas GP: Design of ECC-Based ElGamal Encryption Scheme Using CL-PKC. In Recent Advances in Information Technology: RAIT-2014 Proceedings. Edited by Biswas GP, Mukhopadhyay S. Springer India; 2014:27–34.

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 Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability.

Blog post

Andrew E: Magic Mushrooms Could Help Smokers Kick The Habit. IFLScience 2014,

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: Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration: Light Truck Average Fuel Economy Standard, Model Year 2002. U.S. Government Printing Office; 2000.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Lurz JP: Using Simplified Models and Limited-Horizon Planning to React to Time-Critical Problems. 2019,

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

Cowen T: Signs of a Shakier New Normal. New York Times 2015,

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	Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability
Abbreviation	Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain.
ISSN (print)	1877-3435
Scope	General Environmental Science General Social Sciences