How to format your references using the Digital Journalism citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Digital Journalism. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Johnston, Laura A. 2009. “Competitive Interactions between Cells: Death, Growth, and Geography.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 324 (5935): 1679–1682.
A journal article with 2 authors
Abrams, Daniel M., and Steven H. Strogatz. 2003. “Linguistics: Modelling the Dynamics of Language Death.” Nature 424 (6951): 900.
A journal article with 3 authors
Cicerone, Ralph J., Mario J. Molina, and Donald R. Blake. 2012. “Retrospective. F. Sherwood Rowland (1927-2012).” Science (New York, N.Y.) 336 (6078): 170.
A journal article with 11 or more authors
Khademi, Shahram, Joseph O’Connell 3rd, Jonathan Remis, Yaneth Robles-Colmenares, Larry J. W. Miercke, and Robert M. Stroud. 2004. “Mechanism of Ammonia Transport by Amt/MEP/Rh: Structure of AmtB at 1.35 A.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 305 (5690): 1587–1594.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Alladin, Assen. 2015. Integrative CBT for Anxiety Disorders. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An edited book
Lopez-Tarruella, Aurelio, ed. 2012. Google and the Law: Empirical Approaches to Legal Aspects of Knowledge-Economy Business Models. Vol. 22. Information Technology and Law Series. The Hague, The Netherlands: T. M. C. Asser Press.
A chapter in an edited book
Molnar, Danielle S., Fuschia M. Sirois, and Tabitha Methot-Jones. 2016. “Trying to Be Perfect in an Imperfect World: Examining the Role of Perfectionism in the Context of Chronic Illness.” In Perfectionism, Health, and Well-Being, edited by Fuschia M. Sirois and Danielle S. Molnar, 69–99. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

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 Digital Journalism.

Blog post
O`Callaghan, Jonathan. 2017. “This Super-Earth Atmosphere Might Have Massive Implications For The Search For Life.” IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/this-superearth-atmosphere-might-have-massive-implications-for-the-search-for-life/.

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. 1985. [Request for Opinion Concerning Exchange Agreements Between Patent and Trademark Office and Private Firms]. B-217448. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
Lyngarkos, Barbara. 2015. “Examination of the Relative Importance of Website Elements for Users of Manufacturers Representative Websites.” Doctoral dissertation, Scottsdale, AZ: Northcentral University.

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
Poniewozik, James. 2016. “When There’s Nothing Like a Good Cry.” New York Times, September 19.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Johnston 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Johnston 2009; Abrams and Strogatz 2003).

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

  • Two authors: (Abrams and Strogatz 2003)
  • Three authors: (Cicerone, Molina, and Blake 2012)
  • 4 or more authors: (Khademi et al. 2004)

About the journal

Full journal titleDigital Journalism
ISSN (print)2167-0811
ISSN (online)2167-082X
Scope

Other styles