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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Sagdeev, R. (2007). History of science. Sputnik and the Soviets. Science (New York, N.Y.), 318(5847), 51–52.
A journal article with 2 authors
van den Elsen, J. M. H., & Isenman, D. E. (2011). A crystal structure of the complex between human complement receptor 2 and its ligand C3d. Science (New York, N.Y.), 332(6029), 608–611.
A journal article with 3 authors
Wyckoff, G. J., Wang, W., & Wu, C. I. (2000). Rapid evolution of male reproductive genes in the descent of man. Nature, 403(6767), 304–309.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Wigge, P. A., Kim, M. C., Jaeger, K. E., Busch, W., Schmid, M., Lohmann, J. U., & Weigel, D. (2005). Integration of spatial and temporal information during floral induction in Arabidopsis. Science (New York, N.Y.), 309(5737), 1056–1059.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Krimpmann, A. (2015). Principles of Group Accounting under IFRS. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An edited book
MacEntee, K., Burkholder, C., & Schwab-Cartas, J. (Eds.). (2016). What’s a Cellphilm?: Integrating Mobile Phone Technology into Participatory Visual Research and Activism. SensePublishers.
A chapter in an edited book
Sellitto, A., Cimmelli, V. A., & Jou, D. (2016). Weakly Nonlocal and Nonlinear Heat Transport. In V. A. Cimmelli & D. Jou (Eds.), Mesoscopic Theories of Heat Transport in Nanosystems (pp. 109–132). Springer International Publishing.

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. (2015, April 9). Ivory And Saving Elephants: How Corruption Is Undermining Every Aspect Of Conservation. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/ivory-and-saving-elephants-how-corruption-undermining-every-aspect-conservation/

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. (1994). Default Rates at HBCUs (HEHS-94-97R). 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
Prakash, A. (2010). Empire on the Seine: Surveillance, Citizenship, and North African Migrants in Paris (1925–1975) [Doctoral dissertation]. Columbia 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
Conklin, K. (2005, January 9). Honest Work, Honest Pay. New York Times, 14NJ15.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Sagdeev, 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Sagdeev, 2007; van den Elsen & Isenman, 2011).

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

  • Two authors: (van den Elsen & Isenman, 2011)
  • Three authors: (Wyckoff et al., 2000)
  • 6 or more authors: (Wigge et al., 2005)

About the journal

Full journal titleGovernment Information Quarterly
AbbreviationGov. Inf. Q.
ISSN (print)0740-624X
ScopeLaw
Library and Information Sciences
Sociology and Political Science

Other styles