How to format your references using the Bell Labs Technical Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Bell Labs Technical Journal. 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

[1]

N. Blow, “Genomics: the personal side of genomics,” Nature, vol. 449, no. 7162, pp. 627–630, Oct. 2007.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

J. T. Groves and N. C. Boaz, “Biochemistry. Fishing for peroxidase protons,” Science, vol. 345, no. 6193, pp. 142–143, Jul. 2014.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

J. E. González-Pastor, E. C. Hobbs, and R. Losick, “Cannibalism by sporulating bacteria,” Science, vol. 301, no. 5632, pp. 510–513, Jul. 2003.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

G. La Manno et al., “RNA velocity of single cells,” Nature, vol. 560, no. 7719, pp. 494–498, Aug. 2018.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

R. Dmytryk, Wildlife Search and Rescue. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2011.

An edited book

[1]

K. Landsman and E. van Wolde, Eds., The Challenge of Chance: A Multidisciplinary Approach from Science and the Humanities. in The Frontiers Collection. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

A. I. Miranda and S. Douglas, “Aerosols in the atmosphere,” in Air Pollution Modeling and its Application XX, D. G. Steyn and S. T. Rao, Eds., in NATO Science for Peace and Security Series C: Environmental Security. , Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2010, pp. 427–478.

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 Bell Labs Technical Journal.

Blog post

[1]

J. Davis, “Orangutan ‘Kiss Squeaks’ Could Give Insight Into Evolution Of Human Language,” IFLScience. Accessed: Oct. 30, 2018. [Online]. Available: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/orangutan-kiss-squeaks-could-give-insight-into-evolution-of-human-language/

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, “Higher Education: Students Have Increased Borrowing and Working to Help Pay Higher Tuitions,” U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, HEHS-98-63, Feb. 1998.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

C. M. Yuknis, “A grounded theory of deaf middle school students’ revision of their own writing,” Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, MD, 2010.

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]

M. Landler and J. Risen, “Mineral Wealth In Afghanistan Tempts Trump,” New York Times, p. A1, Jul. 25, 2017.

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], [2], [3], [4].

About the journal

Full journal title	Bell Labs Technical Journal
Abbreviation	Bell Labs Tech. J.
ISSN (print)	1089-7089
Scope	Electrical and Electronic Engineering