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

Schilling, G. (2000). HIGH-ENERGY ASTROPHYSICS: X-ray Satellites Seek Clues to Bursts. Science (New York, N.Y.), 290(5493), 927.

A journal article with 2 authors

Steven, A. C., & Spear, P. G. (2006). Biochemistry. Viral glycoproteins and an evolutionary conundrum. Science (New York, N.Y.), 313(5784), 177–178.

A journal article with 3 authors

Barsh, G. S., Farooqi, I. S., & O’Rahilly, S. (2000). Genetics of body-weight regulation. Nature, 404(6778), 644–651.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

van Rijn, S., Nilsson, J., Noske, D. P., Vandertop, W. P., Tannous, B. A., & Würdinger, T. (2013). Functional multiplex reporter assay using tagged Gaussia luciferase. Scientific Reports, 3, 1046.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Simpkins, A. M., & Simpkins, C. A. (2010). Meditation and Yoga in Psychotherapy. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Ježek, D. (Ed.). (2013). Atlas on the Human Testis: Normal Morphology and Pathology. Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Buldas, A., & Laur, S. (2006). Do Broken Hash Functions Affect the Security of Time-Stamping Schemes? In J. Zhou, M. Yung, & F. Bao (Eds.), Applied Cryptography and Network Security: 4th International Conference, ACNS 2006, Singapore, June 6-9, 2006. Proceedings (pp. 50–65). 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. (2013, December 18). Milky Way galaxy has four arms, not two. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/milky-way-galaxy-has-four-arms-not-two/

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. (1999). Federal Aviation Administration: Financial Management Issues (T-AIMD-99-122). 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

Smith, G. S. (2008). The relationship between legislative implementations and educator readiness in inclusive educational environments [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Phoenix.

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

Hollander, S. (2002, June 30). Golden Arms Tourney Continues a Quest. New York Times, 86.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Schilling, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Schilling, 2000; Steven & Spear, 2006).

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

Two authors: (Steven & Spear, 2006)
Three authors: (Barsh et al., 2000)
6 or more authors: (van Rijn et al., 2013)

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

Research and Writing Guides