How to format your references using the Health Information Science and Systems citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Health Information Science and Systems. 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 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

1. Smaglik P. Stem-cell state lines. Nature. 2004;429:905.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Richards TA, Cavalier-Smith T. Myosin domain evolution and the primary divergence of eukaryotes. Nature. 2005;436:1113–8.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Jiang H, Huang N, Zhu Y. Analysis of wind-blown sand movement over transverse dunes. Sci Rep. 2014;4:7114.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Colman-Lerner A, Gordon A, Serra E, Chin T, Resnekov O, Endy D, et al. Regulated cell-to-cell variation in a cell-fate decision system. Nature. 2005;437:699–706.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Huber PJ. Data Analysis. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 2011.

An edited book

1. Nguyen NT, editor. Transactions on Computational Collective Intelligence VII. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Grimes A, Grinter RE. Designing Persuasion: Health Technology for Low-Income African American Communities. In: Kort Y de, IJsselsteijn W, Midden C, Eggen B, Fogg BJ, editors. Persuasive Technology: Second International Conference on Persuasive Technology, PERSUASIVE 2007, Palo Alto, CA, USA, April 26-27, 2007, Revised Selected Papers. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2007. p. 24–35.

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 Health Information Science and Systems.

Blog post

1. Andrew E. Yet Another Teaser Trailer Of The Hoverboard Lexus Claims It’s Built [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/technology/yet-another-teaser-trailer-hoverboard-lexus-claims-its-built/

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

1. Government Accountability Office. Federal Research: Challenges to Implementing the Advanced Technology Program. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 1998 Mar. Report No.: RCED/OCE-98-83R.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

1. Pearson RS. Relationship Banking in a Competitive Environment With and Without Information Sharing: The Importance of Credit Bureaus in Microfinance [Doctoral dissertation]. [Columbus, OH]: Ohio State University; 2008.

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

1. Brantley B. A ‘Torch’ Still Sears. New York Times. 2017 Oct 20;C1.

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	Health Information Science and Systems
Abbreviation	Health Inf. Sci. Syst.
ISSN (online)	2047-2501
Scope