How to format your references using the IEEE Systems Journal citation style

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

E. F. DeLong, “Microbiology. Life on the thermodynamic edge,” Science, vol. 317, no. 5836, pp. 327–328, Jul. 2007.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

F. Gong and C. Yanofsky, “Instruction of translating ribosome by nascent peptide,” Science, vol. 297, no. 5588, pp. 1864–1867, Sep. 2002.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

I. Melendez, K. Grice, and L. Schwark, “Exceptional preservation of Palaeozoic steroids in a diagenetic continuum,” Sci. Rep., vol. 3, p. 2768, Sep. 2013.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

I. F. Kappers, A. Aharoni, T. W. J. M. van Herpen, L. L. P. Luckerhoff, M. Dicke, and H. J. Bouwmeester, “Genetic engineering of terpenoid metabolism attracts bodyguards to Arabidopsis,” Science, vol. 309, no. 5743, pp. 2070–2072, Sep. 2005.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

H. Kerzner and C. Belack, Managing Complex Projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2010.

An edited book

[1]

T. Tropina, Self- and Co-regulation in Cybercrime, Cybersecurity and National Security. in SpringerBriefs in Cybersecurity. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2015.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

J. Agassi and A. Meidan, “The Burden of Proof,” in Beg to Differ: The Logic of Disputes and Argumentation, A. Meidan, Ed., Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2016, pp. 41–44.

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 Systems Journal.

Blog post

[1]

B. Taub, “Feeding Graphene To Silkworms Makes Them Spin Super Silk,” 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, “IRS Information Systems: Weaknesses Increase Risk of Fraud and Impair Reliability of Management Information,” U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, AIMD-93-34, Sep. 1993.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

B. Ma, “Improving the performance of hyperspectral target detection,” Doctoral dissertation, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS, 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]

E. Rosenberg, “American Airlines Suspends Worker After Episode on Plane,” New York Times, p. A18, Apr. 22, 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 Systems Journal
Abbreviation	IEEE Syst. J.
ISSN (print)	1932-8184
Scope	Control and Systems Engineering Electrical and Electronic Engineering