How to format your references using the EPL citation style

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

[1]

Berry B 2013 Teacherpreneurs: a bold brand of teacher leadership for 21st-century teaching and learning Science 340 309–10

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

Valsami-Jones E and Lynch I 2015 NANOSAFETY. How safe are nanomaterials? Science 350 388–9

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Ando R, Mizuno H and Miyawaki A 2004 Regulated fast nucleocytoplasmic shuttling observed by reversible protein highlighting Science 306 1370–3

A journal article with 99 or more authors

[1]

Ricardo A, Carrigan M A, Olcott A N and Benner S A 2004 Borate minerals stabilize ribose Science 303 196

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

Rankin J 2008 Effects of Antenatal Exercise on Psychological Well-Being, Pregnancy and Birth Outcome (Philadelphia, PA, USA: Whurr Publishers Ltd)

An edited book

[1]

Righi R 2012 Teoria algebrica dei meccanismi automatici vol 19 (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer)

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Soto J, Campos I and Martínez-Máñez R 2013 Monitoring Wastewater Treatment Using Voltammetric Electronic Tongues Smart Sensors for Real-Time Water Quality Monitoring Smart Sensors, Measurement and Instrumentation ed S C Mukhopadhyay and A Mason (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer) pp 65–103

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 EPL.

Blog post

[1]

Fang J 2015 Mars One Finalist Announces That It’s All A Scam IFLScience

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

[1]

Government Accountability Office 1987 Aviation Security: FAA Needs Preboard Passenger Screening Performance Standards (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

Cervantes-Kelly M D 2010 Translation and interpretation as a means to improve bilingual high school students’ English and Spanish academic language proficiency Doctoral dissertation (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona)

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

[1]

(nyt) S K 2004 World Briefing | Europe: Russia: Two Killed In Bus Stop Blast New York Times A6

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	EPL
Abbreviation	EPL
ISSN (print)	0295-5075
ISSN (online)	1286-4854
Scope	General Physics and Astronomy