How to format your references using the HEC Forum citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for HEC Forum. 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.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
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
Wark, D. (2014). Particle physics: The hunt for Majorana neutrinos hots up. Nature, 510(7504), 224–225.
A journal article with 2 authors
Gervais, W. M., & Norenzayan, A. (2012). Analytic thinking promotes religious disbelief. Science (New York, N.Y.), 336(6080), 493–496.
A journal article with 3 authors
Tsuchida, T., Koga, R., & Fukatsu, T. (2004). Host plant specialization governed by facultative symbiont. Science (New York, N.Y.), 303(5666), 1989.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Zubir, N. A., Yacou, C., Motuzas, J., Zhang, X., & Diniz da Costa, J. C. (2014). Structural and functional investigation of graphene oxide-Fe3O4 nanocomposites for the heterogeneous Fenton-like reaction. Scientific reports, 4, 4594.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Traitler, H., Coleman, B., & Hofmann, K. (2015). Food Industry Design, Technology and Innovation. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Frolova, M., Prados, M.-J., & Nadaï, A. (Eds.). (2015). Renewable Energies and European Landscapes: Lessons from Southern European Cases. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.
A chapter in an edited book
Shahid, A., Wilkinson, K., Marcu, S., & Shapiro, C. M. (2012). Apnea Knowledge Test. In A. Shahid, K. Wilkinson, S. Marcu, & C. M. Shapiro (Eds.), STOP, THAT and One Hundred Other Sleep Scales (pp. 49–51). New York, NY: 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 HEC Forum.

Blog post
Fang, J. (2014, December 19). NASA Just Emailed A Wrench To The International Space Station. IFLScience. IFLScience. Accessed 30 October 2018

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. (2003). Airline Ticketing: Impact of Changes in the Airline Ticket Distribution Industry (No. GAO-03-749). Washington, DC: 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
De los Santos, E. (2014). Increasing the psychological well-being of undocumented Latino youth students in California: A grant proposal (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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
Rao, T. (2017, June 29). Comfort Food. New York Times, p. BR13.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Wark 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Gervais and Norenzayan 2012; Wark 2014).

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

  • Two authors: (Gervais and Norenzayan 2012)
  • Three or more authors: (Zubir et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleHEC Forum
AbbreviationHEC Forum
ISSN (print)0956-2737
ISSN (online)1572-8498
ScopeHealth Policy
Issues, ethics and legal aspects
Health(social science)

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