How to format your references using the IEEE Potentials citation style

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

A. M. Davis, “Astronomy. Early solar system chronology,” Science, vol. 325, no. 5943, pp. 951–952, Aug. 2009.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

G. M. Yanega and M. A. Rubega, “Feeding mechanisms: Hummingbird jaw bends to aid insect capture,” Nature, vol. 428, no. 6983, p. 615, Apr. 2004.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

M. Rigol, V. Dunjko, and M. Olshanii, “Thermalization and its mechanism for generic isolated quantum systems,” Nature, vol. 452, no. 7189, pp. 854–858, Apr. 2008.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

R. Blaauwgeers, V. B. Eltsov, M. Krusius, J. J. Ruohio, R. Schanen, and G. E. Volovik, “Double-quantum vortex in superfluid 3He-A,” Nature, vol. 404, no. 6777, pp. 471–473, Mar. 2000.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

D. Birke, Social Networks and their Economics. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2013.

An edited book

[1]

S. Linge, Programming for Computations - MATLAB/Octave: A Gentle Introduction to Numerical Simulations with MATLAB/Octave, vol. 14. in Texts in Computational Science and Engineering, vol. 14. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

P. Roberts, “Education, Society and the Individual,” in From West to East and Back Again: An Educational Reading of Hermann Hesse’s Later Work, P. Roberts, Ed., Rotterdam: SensePublishers, 2012, pp. 55–64.

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 Potentials.

Blog post

[1]

R. Andrews, “This Human Has Been ‘Designed’ To Survive In Car Crashes,” IFLScience.

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, “Weather Forecasting: Important Issues on Automated Weather Processing System Need Resolution,” U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, IMTEC-93-12BR, Jan. 1993.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

D. S. Patel, “GoSchoolPro: A Web Portal for the Students Using MVC Architecture and ASP.NET Framework,” Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA, 2017.

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. T. Kaufman, “Lillian Ross Dies at 99; A New Yorker Reporter Whose Memoir Rankled,” New York Times, p. A25, Sep. 20, 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 Potentials
Abbreviation	IEEE Potentials
ISSN (print)	0278-6648
Scope	Strategy and Management Electrical and Electronic Engineering Education