How to format your references using the Electronic Commerce Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Electronic Commerce 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	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

Mayer, M. L. (2006). Glutamate receptors at atomic resolution. Nature, 440(7083), 456–462.

A journal article with 2 authors

Wikelski, M., & Thom, C. (2000). Marine iguanas shrink to survive El Niño. Nature, 403(6765), 37–38.

A journal article with 3 authors

Lam, F. H., Steger, D. J., & O’Shea, E. K. (2008). Chromatin decouples promoter threshold from dynamic range. Nature, 453(7192), 246–250.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Fadok, V. A., Bratton, D. L., Rose, D. M., Pearson, A., Ezekewitz, R. A., & Henson, P. M. (2000). A receptor for phosphatidylserine-specific clearance of apoptotic cells. Nature, 405(6782), 85–90.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Aubrey, S. B. (2010). The Profitable Hobby Farm. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing, Inc.

An edited book

Tropea, C., & Bleckmann, H. (Eds.). (2012). Nature-Inspired Fluid Mechanics: Results of the DFG Priority Programme 1207 ”Nature-inspired Fluid Mechanics” 2006-2012 (Vol. 119). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Uzan, J.-P., & Leclercq, B. (2008). Planning the edifice: structure of theories. In B. Leclercq (Ed.), The Natural Laws of the Universe: Understanding Fundamental Constants (pp. 37–58). New York, NY: Praxis.

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 Electronic Commerce Research.

Blog post

Luntz, S. (2017, March 3). The First Life Forms Might Not Have Needed Phosphate. IFLScience. IFLScience. Retrieved October 30, 2018, from https://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/the-first-life-forms-might-not-have-needed-phosphate/

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. (1992). Composite Health Care System: Outpatient Capability Is Nearly Ready for Worldwide Deployment (No. IMTEC-93-11). 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

Gary, J. O. (2011). Women’s social networking: Steps that organize low-technology users with emergency needs (Doctoral dissertation). Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA.

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

Sweeney-James, K. A. (2016, October 25). A Wedding Night Upgrade at the Plaza. New York Times, p. A22.

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	Electronic Commerce Research
Abbreviation	Electron. Commer. Res.
ISSN (print)	1389-5753
ISSN (online)	1572-9362
Scope	Human-Computer Interaction Economics, Econometrics and Finance (miscellaneous)