How to format your references using the IEEE Spectrum citation style

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

C. Humphries, “Screening: Testing times,” Nature, vol. 488, no. 7413, pp. S8-9, Aug. 2012.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

C. A. Mbadugha and A. O. Onakoya, “The awareness, perceptions and experiences of primary open angle glaucoma patients in Lagos Nigeria,” Sci. Rep., vol. 4, p. 7585, Dec. 2014.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

C. A. Hinde, R. A. Johnstone, and R. M. Kilner, “Parent-offspring conflict and coadaptation,” Science, vol. 327, no. 5971, pp. 1373–1376, Mar. 2010.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

T. Park et al., “Isotropic quantum scattering and unconventional superconductivity,” Nature, vol. 456, no. 7220, pp. 366–368, Nov. 2008.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

L. A. Clayton, Bartolomé de las Casas and the Conquest of the Americas. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

An edited book

[1]

V. Alexeev, Moduli of Weighted Hyperplane Arrangements. Basel: Springer, 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

N. M. Katz, “Another Look at the Dwork Family,” in Algebra, Arithmetic, and Geometry: Volume II: In Honor of Yu. I. Manin, Y. Tschinkel and Y. Zarhin, Eds. Boston, MA: Birkhäuser, 2009, pp. 89–126.

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 Spectrum.

Blog post

[1]

J. Fang, “Stressed? Neurons Decide Whether You Cope or Become Depressed,” IFLScience, Jun. 17, 2014. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/stressed-neurons-decide-whether-you-cope-or-become-depressed/ (accessed Oct. 30, 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

[1]

Government Accountability Office, “Statutory Copyright Licensing: Implications of a Phaseout on Access to Television Programming and Consumer Prices Are Unclear,” U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, GAO-12-75, Nov. 2011.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

W. H. Ott, “An Analysis of the Coordinated Implementation of Digitally-Aided Close Air Support: An Integrated Systems Engineering and Test & Evaluation Approach,” Doctoral dissertation, George Washington University, Washington, DC, 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]

J. Medina, R. Pérez-Peña, M. S. Schmidt, and L. Goodstein, “Arms Stockpile Is Found in Home of Two Suspects,” New York Times, p. A1, Dec. 03, 2015.

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]–[4].

About the journal

Full journal title	IEEE Spectrum
Abbreviation	IEEE Spectr.
ISSN (print)	0018-9235
Scope	Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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