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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Spiegel, F. W. (2012). Evolution. Contemplating the first Plantae. Science (New York, N.Y.), 335(6070), 809–810.

A journal article with 2 authors

Oldham, M. L., & Chen, J. (2011). Crystal structure of the maltose transporter in a pretranslocation intermediate state. Science (New York, N.Y.), 332(6034), 1202–1205.

A journal article with 3 authors

Carlos, C., Torres, T. T., & Ottoboni, L. M. M. (2013). Bacterial communities and species-specific associations with the mucus of Brazilian coral species. Scientific reports, 3, 1624.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Li, X., He, Y., Wang, Y., Dong, J., & Li, H. (2014). Dewetting properties of metallic liquid film on nanopillared graphene. Scientific reports, 4, 3938.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Scott, D. W. (2008). Color Atlas of Farm Animal Dermatology. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

An edited book

Borrego, C., & Norman, A.-L. (Eds.). (2007). Air Pollution Modeling and Its Application XVII. Boston, MA: Springer US.

A chapter in an edited book

Scheidler, A., Merkle, D., & Middendorf, M. (2008). Congestion Control in Ant Like Moving Agent Systems. In M. Hinchey, A. Pagnoni, F. J. Rammig, & H. Schmeck (Eds.), Biologically-Inspired Collaborative Computing: IFIP 20th World Computer Congress, Second IFIP TC 10 International Conference on Biologically-Inspired Collaborative Computing, September 8–9, 2008, Milano, Italy (pp. 33–43). Boston, MA: Springer US.

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

Hamilton, K. (2016, July 6). Health Check: What Are The Risks Of Drinking Before You Know You’re Pregnant? IFLScience. IFLScience. Retrieved October 30, 2018, from https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/health-check-what-are-the-risks-of-drinking-before-you-know-youre-pregnant/

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. (1993). Software Reuse: Major Issues Need to Be Resolved Before Benefits Can Be Achieved (No. IMTEC-93-16). 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

Skiold-Hanlin, S. (2015). Functional and Ecological Aspects of the Mucus Trails of the Freshwater Gastropod Elimia potosiensis (Doctoral dissertation). Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL.

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

Greenhouse, L. (2007, January 17). Justices Decline to Take Up New Eminent Domain Case. New York Times, p. A15.

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)