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Environmental Science Guide

Literature Cited

The Literature Cited section comes after the body of your paper.   

  • Title of the section is “Literature Cited” and set in the “small caps” style

  • Sources are listed in alphabetical order by author, except if there are two authors, list those sources chronologically 

  • Each source is a paragraph and the paragraphs are formatted using a hanging indentation

  • You should not include abstracts or unpublished materials 

General formatting for each source. 

Generally, each source needs to contain sufficient identifying information so that your reader can locate that source, should they want to read it themselves.  You will want to include the author(s), date, title, and journal information (If the article contains a Digital object identifier (DOI) include it in the Literature Cited, visit Journal Articles section for this example. Here is an example without a DOI: 

Lastname, A. A., B. B. Lastname, and C. C. Lastname. Year. Title of article:  Subtitle of article. Journal Name Volume number:first page-last page. 

Example:

  • Author 
    • Note, the first author is listed by last name and then first initial, middle initial. All other authors are listed by first initial, middle initial, and then last name  

    • List the authors in the order they appear in the article and include ALL initials as appears in the article

    • Between 2-12 authors include all 

  • Date  
    • Give the Year of publication

  • Title
    • Use the exact title as written in the journal article 

    • Only capitalize the first word of the title, the first word after any colon in the title, and any proper names 

    • If the title includes genus or species names, Italicize genus and species names 

Example:

Do not include database information. 

More information about citing Journal articles, Books, Web sites, etc., can be found in their respective locations.