How to format your references using the IEEE Software citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for IEEE Software. 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	Download the output style file
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]

P. Vukusic, “Materials science. Evolutionary photonics with a twist,” Science, vol. 325, no. 5939, pp. 398–399, Jul. 2009.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

T. J. Brodribb and S. A. M. McAdam, “Passive origins of stomatal control in vascular plants,” Science, vol. 331, no. 6017, pp. 582–585, Feb. 2011.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

E. J. Javaux, A. H. Knoll, and M. R. Walter, “Morphological and ecological complexity in early eukaryotic ecosystems,” Nature, vol. 412, no. 6842, pp. 66–69, Jul. 2001.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

J. Beugnon et al., “Quantum interference between two single photons emitted by independently trapped atoms,” Nature, vol. 440, no. 7085, pp. 779–782, Apr. 2006.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

J. Trout and S. Rivkin, Differentiate or Die. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2008.

An edited book

[1]

W. Wojtkowski, W. G. Wojtkowski, J. Zupancic, G. Magyar, and G. Knapp, Eds., Advances in Information Systems Development: New Methods and Practice for the Networked Society. Boston, MA: Springer US, 2007.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

S. Tulyakov, F. Farooq, and V. Govindaraju, “Symmetric Hash Functions for Fingerprint Minutiae,” in Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis: Third International Conference on Advances in Pattern Recognition, ICAPR 2005, Bath, UK, August 22-25, 2005, Proceedings, Part II, S. Singh, M. Singh, C. Apte, and P. Perner, Eds., in Lecture Notes in Computer Science. , Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2005, pp. 30–38.

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 Software.

Blog post

[1]

S. Luntz, “Liquid Water May Once Have Flowed On Vesta,” IFLScience. Accessed: Oct. 30, 2018. [Online]. Available: https://www.iflscience.com/space/claims-vesta-once-had-water/

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, “Very Light Jets: Several Factors Could Influence Their Effect on the National Airspace System,” U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, GAO-07-1001, Aug. 2007.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

M. K. Gnoinska, “Poland and the Cold War in East and Southeast Asia, 1949-1965,” Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University, Washington, DC, 2010.

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. Beschloss, “The Buck Shouldn’t Stop Here,” New York Times, p. BR8, Oct. 30, 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 Software
Abbreviation	IEEE Softw.
ISSN (print)	0740-7459
Scope	Software