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

Winful, H. G. (2003). Optics (communication arising): mechanism for “superluminal” tunnelling. Nature, 424(6949), 638; discussion 638.

A journal article with 2 authors

Baker, A. W., & Forest, K. T. (2014). Structural biology: Action at a distance in a light receptor. Nature, 509(7499), 174–175.

A journal article with 3 authors

Clutton-Brock, T. H., Coulson, T., & Milner, J. M. (2004). Red deer stocks in the Highlands of Scotland. Nature, 429(6989), 261–262.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Song, J.-J., Smith, S. K., Hannon, G. J., & Joshua-Tor, L. (2004). Crystal structure of Argonaute and its implications for RISC slicer activity. Science (New York, N.Y.), 305(5689), 1434–1437.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Zhang, L., Peng, M., Chang, D., & Xu, Y. (2016). Dam Failure Mechanisms and Risk Assessment. John Wiley & Sons Singapore Pte. Ltd.

An edited book

Gales, J. (2016). Structural Fire Performance of Contemporary Post-tensioned Concrete Construction (K. Hartin & L. Bisby, Eds.; 1st ed. 2016). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Koenig, R. E., Locher, P., & Haenni, R. (2013). Attacking the Verification Code Mechanism in the Norwegian Internet Voting System. In J. Heather, S. Schneider, & V. Teague (Eds.), E-Voting and Identify: 4th International Conference, Vote-ID 2013, Guildford, UK, July 17-19, 2013. Proceedings (pp. 76–92). 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

Andrew, E. (2016, May 9). The UAE Wants To Build A ‘Rainmaking Mountain’ – Are We All Ok With That? IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/uae-wants-build-rainmaking-mountain-are-we-all-ok/

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. (1975). Information on the New Community of Soul City, North Carolina (RED-76-50). 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

Fadamin, A. (2017). Synthesis, Characterization and Electrochemistry of the Ruthenium Schiff Base Complex [(Saloph)Ru(NO)Cl] [Doctoral dissertation]. Southern Illinois University.

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

Gorman, J. (2017, January 2). Study Puts a Little Distance Between Dinosaurs and Their Bird Relations. New York Times, A16.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Winful, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Baker & Forest, 2014; Winful, 2003).

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

Two authors: (Baker & Forest, 2014)
Three authors: (Clutton-Brock et al., 2004)
6 or more authors: (Song et al., 2004)

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

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