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. Stafford N. Turbulent times. Nature. 2006;443:385.

A journal article with 2 authors

1. Peng L, Mortensen NA. Plasmonic-cavity model for radiating nano-rod antennas. Sci Rep. 2014;4:3825.

A journal article with 3 authors

1. Zhao W, Luo J, Jiao S. Comprehensive characterization of cancer subtype associated long non-coding RNAs and their clinical implications. Sci Rep. 2014;4:6591.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

1. Michel FM, Ehm L, Antao SM, Lee PL, Chupas PJ, Liu G, et al. The structure of ferrihydrite, a nanocrystalline material. Science. 2007;316:1726–9.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

1. Tewari A. Advanced Control of Aircraft, Spacecraft and Rockets. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd; 2011.

An edited book

1. Vejnarová J, Kratochvíl V, editors. Belief Functions: Theory and Applications: 4th International Conference, BELIEF 2016, Prague, Czech Republic, September 21-23, 2016, Proceedings. Cham: Springer International Publishing; 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

1. Hutcheson A, Allen GL. Path Memory in Real-World and Virtual Settings. In: Cohn AG, Mark DM, editors. Spatial Information Theory: International Conference, COSIT 2005, Ellicottville, NY, USA, September 14-18, 2005 Proceedings. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2005. p. 67–82.

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. Andrews R. Sitting Might Not Be That Bad For You After All [Internet]. IFLScience. IFLScience; 2015 [cited 2018 Oct 30]. Available from: https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/sitting-wont-kill-you-after-all/

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. Information Technology: Agencies Need to Improve the Implementation and Use of Earned Value Techniques to Help Manage Major System Acquisitions. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office; 2009 Oct. Report No.: GAO-10-2.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

1. Griner KF. The Effectiveness of the Integrative Career Counseling Model [Doctoral dissertation]. [Washington, DC]: George Washington University; 2014.

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. Sisario B. Tommy LiPuma, 80, a Record Producer and Five-Time Grammy Award Winner. New York Times. 2017 Mar 15;B19.

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

Research and Writing Guides