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]

S. Lamb, “Walking with producers,” Nature, vol. 412, no. 6844, p. 277, Jul. 2001.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

E. Lavik and J. Ustin, “Medicine. Leveraging shear stress to bust clots with nanoparticles,” Science, vol. 337, no. 6095, pp. 658–659, Aug. 2012.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

J. H. Schön, H. Meng, and Z. Bao, “Field-effect modulation of the conductance of single molecules,” Science, vol. 294, no. 5549, pp. 2138–2140, Dec. 2001.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

L. Huang et al., “Graphene/Si CMOS hybrid hall integrated circuits,” Sci. Rep., vol. 4, p. 5548, Jul. 2014.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

D. Zelterman, Discrete Distributions: Applications in the Health Sciences. in Wiley Series in Probability and Statistics. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2005.

An edited book

[1]

S. H. Lone, Chemical and Pharmacological Perspective of Artemisia amygdalina. in SpringerBriefs in Pharmacology and Toxicology. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

A. Fernández, D. Peralta, F. Herrera, and J. M. Benítez, “An Overview of E-Learning in Cloud Computing,” in Workshop on Learning Technology for Education in Cloud (LTEC’12), L. Uden, E. S. Corchado Rodríguez, J. F. De Paz Santana, and F. De la Prieta, Eds., in Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing. , Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2012, pp. 35–46.

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, “Galloping Crocodiles Ate Dinosaurs In North Africa,” IFLScience. Accessed: Oct. 30, 2018. [Online]. Available: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/galloping-crocodiles-ate-dinosaurs-north-africa/

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, “Intercity Passenger Rail: Amtrak Needs to Improve Its Decisionmaking Process for Its Route and Service Proposals,” U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, GAO-02-398, Apr. 2002.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

K. T. Kennedy, “A Heuristic Study of Religious Spirituality and Meaningful Work,” Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University, Washington, DC, 2016.

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]

J. Wagner, “After Striking Out, Nationals Swing a Trade,” New York Times, p. B12, Dec. 08, 2016.

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