How to format your references using the IEEE Communications Letters citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for IEEE Communications Letters. 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]

D. Goldston, “A word in the right place,” Nature, vol. 445, no. 7129, p. 698, Feb. 2007.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

T. Kobayashi and K. Hasui, “Efficient immunization strategies to prevent financial contagion,” Sci. Rep., vol. 4, p. 3834, Jan. 2014.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

A. Tamsir, J. J. Tabor, and C. A. Voigt, “Robust multicellular computing using genetically encoded NOR gates and chemical ‘wires,’” Nature, vol. 469, no. 7329, pp. 212–215, Jan. 2011.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

J. M. Keck et al., “A cell cycle phosphoproteome of the yeast centrosome,” Science, vol. 332, no. 6037, pp. 1557–1561, Jun. 2011.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

M. Lowman, A Practical Guide to Analytics for Governments. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2017.

An edited book

[1]

A. An, S. Matwin, Z. W. Raś, and D. Ślęzak, Eds., Foundations of Intelligent Systems: 17th International Symposium, ISMIS 2008 Toronto, Canada, May 20-23, 2008 Proceedings, vol. 4994. in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 4994. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2008.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

D. Beckmann, “Non-local Transport in Superconductor–Ferromagnet Hybrid Structures,” in Fundamentals of Superconducting Nanoelectronics, A. Sidorenko, Ed., in NanoScience and Technology. , Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2011, pp. 101–116.

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 IEEE Communications Letters.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, “Beautiful Photo Of Saturn’s Moon Tethys Reveals Strange Impact Crater,” IFLScience. Accessed: Oct. 30, 2018. [Online]. Available: https://www.iflscience.com/space/beautiful-photo-saturns-moon-tethys/

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, “Analysis of Travel Activities of Certain Regulatory Agency Commissioners During 1971-75,” U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, CED-76-155, Oct. 1976.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

M. L. Hogue, “A Case Study of Perspectives on Building School and Community Partnerships,” Doctoral dissertation, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, 2012.

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]

M. M. Grynbaum, “Firing Puts Public Split Over Media On Display,” New York Times, p. A13, May 10, 2017.

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], [2], [3], [4].

About the journal

Full journal title	IEEE Communications Letters
Abbreviation	IEEE Commun. Lett.
ISSN (print)	1089-7798
Scope	Computer Science Applications Electrical and Electronic Engineering Modelling and Simulation