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]

M. Vijayan, “Obituary. G.N. Ramachandran (1922-2001),” Nature, vol. 411, no. 6837, p. 544, May 2001.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

D. A. Sandoval and R. J. Seeley, “Medicine. The microbes made me eat it,” Science, vol. 328, no. 5975, pp. 179–180, Apr. 2010.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

Y. Gutfreund, W. Zheng, and E. I. Knudsen, “Gated visual input to the central auditory system,” Science, vol. 297, no. 5586, pp. 1556–1559, Aug. 2002.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

P. Cayirlioglu et al., “Hybrid neurons in a microRNA mutant are putative evolutionary intermediates in insect CO2 sensory systems,” Science, vol. 319, no. 5867, pp. 1256–1260, Feb. 2008.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

T. Held, In-situ-Verfahren zur Boden- und Grundwassersanierung. Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, 2014.

An edited book

[1]

J. Clark, Lifting Modules: Supplements and Projectivity in Module Theory. in Frontiers in Mathematics. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2006.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

T. Takahama and S. Sakai, “Constrained Optimization by ε Constrained Differential Evolution with Dynamic ε-Level Control,” in Advances in Differential Evolution, U. K. Chakraborty, Ed., in Studies in Computational Intelligence. , Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2008, pp. 139–154.

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]

A. Carpineti, “More Fast Radio Bursts Have Been Detected From Auriga,” IFLScience. Accessed: Oct. 30, 2018. [Online]. Available: https://www.iflscience.com/space/more-fast-radio-bursts-have-been-detected-from-auriga/

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, “Vehicle Safety: Enhanced Project Management of New Information Technology Could Help Improve NHTSA’s Oversight of Safety Defects,” U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, GAO-16-312, Feb. 2016.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

D. Atchley, “Interventions, perceptions of accommodations, and motivating factors impacting the achievement and successful mainstreaming transition of English language learners,” Doctoral dissertation, Lindenwood University, St. Charles, MO, 2009.

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]

B. Sisario, “Judge Rejects Justice Dept. Decision on Music Licensing,” New York Times, p. B4, Sep. 19, 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 Systems Journal
Abbreviation	IEEE Syst. J.
ISSN (print)	1932-8184
Scope	Control and Systems Engineering Electrical and Electronic Engineering