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

Ferry, G. (2013). Scientific heritage: Science today, history tomorrow. Nature, 493(7430), 19–21.

A journal article with 2 authors

Lyon, B. E., & Eadie, J. M. (2004). An obligate brood parasite trapped in the intraspecific arms race of its hosts. Nature, 432(7015), 390–393.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ghimire, A., Shafran, E., & Gerton, J. M. (2014). Using a sharp metal tip to control the polarization and direction of emission from a quantum dot. Scientific reports, 4, 6456.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

He, X., He, X., Dave, V. P., Zhang, Y., Hua, X., Nicolas, E., … Kappes, D. J. (2005). The zinc finger transcription factor Th-POK regulates CD4 versus CD8 T-cell lineage commitment. Nature, 433(7028), 826–833.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Carter, K. B. (2014). Actionable Intelligence. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Cheptsov, A., Brinkmann, S., Gracia, J., Resch, M. M., & Nagel, W. E. (Eds.). (2013). Tools for High Performance Computing 2012. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Balaram, V., Kamala, C. T., Mathur, R., Rao, A. S., & Satyanarayanan, M. (2013). PGE in Road Dust/Top Soil from Major Indian Cities: Implications on Human Health and Environment. In M. Ramkumar (Ed.), On a Sustainable Future of the Earth’s Natural Resources (pp. 85–107). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

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

Davis, J. (2016, November 9). For Male Chimpanzees, It Pays To Have Friends In High Places. IFLScience. IFLScience. Retrieved October 30, 2018, from https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/for-male-chimpanzees-it-pays-to-have-friends-in-high-places/

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). Discontinuance of Social Security Student Benefits (No. 117523). 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

Kafi, W. (2013). The effects of patient demographic variables on cesarean section-related surgical site infection rates (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, 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

Saslow, L. (2007, March 25). Brookhaven Lab Avoids Cuts in Budget. New York Times, p. 14LI2.

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)