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 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]

W. Reik, “Stability and flexibility of epigenetic gene regulation in mammalian development,” Nature, vol. 447, no. 7143, pp. 425–432, May 2007.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

D. di Bernardo and A. Murray, “Explaining the T-wave shape in the ECG,” Nature, vol. 403, no. 6765, p. 40, Jan. 2000.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

C. Costello, S. D. Gaines, and J. Lynham, “Can catch shares prevent fisheries collapse?,” Science, vol. 321, no. 5896, pp. 1678–1681, Sep. 2008.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

Z.-K. Tang, Y.-N. Zhang, D.-Y. Zhang, W.-M. Lau, and L.-M. Liu, “The stability and electronic properties of novel three-dimensional graphene-MoS2 hybrid structure,” Sci. Rep., vol. 4, p. 7007, Nov. 2014.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

A. Gwynne, Guide to Building Control. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.

An edited book

[1]

H. Kwaśnicka and L. C. Jain, Eds., Innovations in Intelligent Image Analysis, vol. 339. in Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol. 339. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2011.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

G. P. Kemp, C. S. Willson, J. D. Rogers, K. A. Westphal, and S. A. Binselam, “Adapting to Change in the Lowermost Mississippi River: Implications for Navigation, Flood Control and Restoration of the Delta Ecosystem,” in Perspectives on the Restoration of the Mississippi Delta: The Once and Future Delta, J. W. Day, G. P. Kemp, A. M. Freeman, and D. P. Muth, Eds., in Estuaries of the World. , Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2014, pp. 51–84.

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]

E. Andrew, “The problem of false balance when reporting on science,” IFLScience. Accessed: Oct. 30, 2018. [Online]. Available: https://www.iflscience.com/environment/problem-false-balance-when-reporting-science/

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, “Air Traffic Control: Continuing Delays Anticipated for the Advanced Automation System,” U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, IMTEC-90-63, Jul. 1990.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

E. J. Timko, “Polynomial Tuples of Commuting Isometries Constrained by 1-Dimensional Varieties,” Doctoral dissertation, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, 2017.

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. W. Walsh, “Puerto Rico Turmoil Sinks Sewer Bond,” New York Times, p. B1, Aug. 26, 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], [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