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]

S. Gaines, “Sex, love and science,” Nature, vol. 413, no. 6853, p. 255, Sep. 2001.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

R. Brent and J. Bruck, “2020 computing: can computers help to explain biology?,” Nature, vol. 440, no. 7083, pp. 416–417, Mar. 2006.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Z.-D. Sun, K. Takagi, and F. Matsushima, “Separation and conversion dynamics of four nuclear spin isomers of ethylene,” Science, vol. 310, no. 5756, pp. 1938–1941, Dec. 2005.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

P. Prusinkiewicz, Y. Erasmus, B. Lane, L. D. Harder, and E. Coen, “Evolution and development of inflorescence architectures,” Science, vol. 316, no. 5830, pp. 1452–1456, Jun. 2007.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

V. M. Lyatkher and A. M. Proudovsky, Hydraulic Modeling. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2016.

An edited book

[1]

A. Voronkov and C. Weidenbach, Eds., Programming Logics: Essays in Memory of Harald Ganzinger, vol. 7797. in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 7797. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2013.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

C. Logan, “Risk Formulation: The New Frontier in Risk Assessment and Management,” in Treatment of Sex Offenders: Strengths and Weaknesses in Assessment and Intervention, D. R. Laws and W. O’Donohue, Eds., Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2016, pp. 83–105.

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, “Why one hectare of rainforest grows more tree species than US and Canada combined,” IFLScience. Accessed: Oct. 30, 2018. [Online]. Available: https://www.iflscience.com/environment/why-one-hectare-rainforest-grows-more-tree-species-us-and-canada-combined/

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, “NASA’s Deep Space Network: Current Management Structure Is Not Conducive to Effectively Matching Resources with Future Requirements,” U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, GAO-06-445, Apr. 2006.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

A. J. Mullin Piette, “Dialogic encounters among health care providers in pediatric critical care: A qualitative, collective case study,” Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ, 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]

N. MacFARQUHAR, “Chechen Links Nemtsov Killing to Charlie Hebdo Cartoons,” New York Times, p. A4, Mar. 10, 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	Bell Labs Technical Journal
Abbreviation	Bell Labs Tech. J.
ISSN (print)	1089-7089
Scope	Electrical and Electronic Engineering