How to format your references using the Government Information Quarterly citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Government Information Quarterly. 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

Bynum, W. F. (2002). Portraits of science. Mosquitoes bite more than once. Science (New York, N.Y.), 295(5552), 47–48.

A journal article with 2 authors

Izawa, D., & Pines, J. (2015). The mitotic checkpoint complex binds a second CDC20 to inhibit active APC/C. Nature, 517(7536), 631–634.

A journal article with 3 authors

Carporzen, L., Gilder, S. A., & Hart, R. J. (2005). Palaeomagnetism of the Vredefort meteorite crater and implications for craters on Mars. Nature, 435(7039), 198–201.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Krattinger, S. G., Lagudah, E. S., Spielmeyer, W., Singh, R. P., Huerta-Espino, J., McFadden, H., Bossolini, E., Selter, L. L., & Keller, B. (2009). A putative ABC transporter confers durable resistance to multiple fungal pathogens in wheat. Science (New York, N.Y.), 323(5919), 1360–1363.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bolstad, W. M. (2009). Understanding Computational Bayesian Statistics. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Caveen, A. (2015). The Controversy over Marine Protected Areas: Science meets Policy (N. Polunin, T. Gray, & S. M. Stead, Eds.). Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Kalliomäki, M., Salminen, S., & Isolauri, E. (2008). Positive Interactions with the Microbiota: Probiotics. In G. B. Huffnagle & M. C. Noverr (Eds.), GI Microbiota and Regulation of the Immune System (pp. 57–66). 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 Government Information Quarterly.

Blog post

Taub, B. (2016, July 25). Mystery Of Belgian King’s Blood Finally Solved After 80 Years. IFLScience; IFLScience.

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. (1997). Financial Audit: District of Columbia Highway Trust Fund’s 1996 Financial Statements (AIMD-98-30). 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

Eggers, M. von. (2017). Searching for a Post-Jungian Psychophysical Reality in Recovery from Addiction [Doctoral dissertation]. Pacifica Graduate Institute.

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

Vecsey, G. (2011, January 29). Indelible Name Added to a Roster of Regrets. New York Times, D3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bynum, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Bynum, 2002; Izawa & Pines, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Izawa & Pines, 2015)
Three authors: (Carporzen et al., 2005)
6 or more authors: (Krattinger et al., 2009)

About the journal

Full journal title	Government Information Quarterly
Abbreviation	Gov. Inf. Q.
ISSN (print)	0740-624X
Scope	Law Library and Information Sciences Sociology and Political Science