How to format your references using the Educational Action Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Educational Action Research. 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

Smaglik, Paul. 2002. “An Electoral Lecture.” Nature 420 (6915): 3.

A journal article with 2 authors

Zhao, Maosheng, and Steven W. Running. 2010. “Drought-Induced Reduction in Global Terrestrial Net Primary Production from 2000 through 2009.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 329 (5994): 940–943.

A journal article with 3 authors

Manoukis, Nicholas C., Brian Hall, and Scott M. Geib. 2014. “A Computer Model of Insect Traps in a Landscape.” Scientific Reports 4 (November): 7015.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Bergemann, Maria, Branimir Sesar, Judith G. Cohen, Aldo M. Serenelli, Allyson Sheffield, Ting S. Li, Luca Casagrande, et al. 2018. “Two Chemically Similar Stellar Overdensities on Opposite Sides of the Plane of the Galactic Disk.” Nature 555 (7696): 334–337.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Pollak, Peter. 2011. Fine Chemicals. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Cooper, William W. 2007. Data Envelopment Analysis: A Comprehensive Text with Models, Applications, References and DEA-Solver Software. Edited by Lawrence M. Seiford and Kaoru Tone. Second Edition. Boston, MA: Springer US.

A chapter in an edited book

Tani, Shoko, Hiroshi Narazaki, Yuta Ueda, Yuji Nakamura, Tenyu Hino, Satoshi Ohyama, Shinya Tomari, et al. 2016. “A Web-Based Stroke Education Application for Older Elementary Schoolchildren Focusing on the FAST Message.” In Innovation in Medicine and Healthcare 2015, edited by Yen-Wei Chen, Carlos Torro, Satoshi Tanaka, Robert J. Howlett, and Lakhmi C. Jain, 37–48. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies. 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 Educational Action Research.

Blog post

Fang, Janet. 2014. “Walking Fish Sheds Light On The Evolution Of Vertebrate Limbs.” IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/walking-fish-sheds-light-evolution-vertebrate-limbs/.

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. 2000. Bureau of Indian Affairs: Use of Highway Trust Fund Resources. AIMD-00-285R. 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

Zelaya, Guadalupe Susana. 2012. “Hopelessness and Diabetes: Do Hispanic Diabetic Patients Feel Less Hopeless Eating Fruits, Vegetables and Exercising Regularly?” Doctoral dissertation, Long Beach, CA: California State University, Long Beach.

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

Feeney, Kelly. 2009. “Scones Upon Scones, Sold at the Shore.” New York Times, August 16.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Smaglik 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Smaglik 2002; Zhao and Running 2010).

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

Two authors: (Zhao and Running 2010)
Three authors: (Manoukis, Hall, and Geib 2014)
4 or more authors: (Bergemann et al. 2018)

About the journal

Full journal title	Educational Action Research
Abbreviation	Educ. Action Res.
ISSN (print)	0965-0792
ISSN (online)	1747-5074
Scope	Education