How to format your references using the Constructivist Foundations citation style

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

Maxmen A. (2012) The hard facts. Nature 485(7400): S50-1.

A journal article with 2 authors

Molloy J. E. & Veigel C. (2003) Biophysics. Myosin motors walk the walk. Science (New York, N.Y.) 300(5628): 2045–2046.

A journal article with 3 authors

Den Brink G. R. van, Santa Barbara P. de & Roberts D. J. (2001) Development. Epithelial cell differentiation--a Mather of choice. Science (New York, N.Y.) 294(5549): 2115–2116.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Zhou D., Tan R. J., Zhou L., Li Y. & Liu Y. (2013) Kidney tubular β-catenin signaling controls interstitial fibroblast fate via epithelial-mesenchymal communication. Scientific reports 3: 1878.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Conrick C. IV & Hanson S. (2013) Vertical Option Spreads. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ.

An edited book

Ismail M. & González D. R. D. E. L. (eds.) (2006) Radio Design in Nanometer Technologies. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.

A chapter in an edited book

Jakovác A. & Patkós A. (2016) The Large-N Expansion. In: Patkós A. (ed.) Resummation and Renormalization in Effective Theories of Particle Physics. Lecture Notes in Physics. Springer International Publishing, Cham: 97–138.

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 Constructivist Foundations.

Blog post

Andrew E. (2014) “Gentle” Microscope Reveals 3D Action Shots Of Living Organisms. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/gentle-microscope-reveals-3d-action-shots-living-organisms/

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

Government Accountability Office (1982) Department of Education Uncertain About Effectiveness of Its Special Services Program.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Lee S. (2016) Data-driven computer vision for science and the humanities. Indiana University, Bloomington, IN.

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

Nir S. M., Mueller B. & Navarro M. (2015) A Tarnished Family Empire. New York Times MB1.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Maxmen 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Molloy & Veigel 2003, Maxmen 2012).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Molloy & Veigel 2003)
Three or more authors: (Zhou et al. 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Constructivist Foundations
ISSN (print)	1782-348X
Scope