How to format your references using the IEEE Transactions on Communications citation style

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

U. Kher, “A call for collaboration,” Nature, vol. 466, no. 7304, pp. S21-2, Jul. 2010.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

S. K. Volkman and D. L. Hartl, “Parasitology. A game of cat and mouth,” Science, vol. 299, no. 5605, pp. 353–354, Jan. 2003.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

E. S. Cochran, J. E. Vidale, and S. Tanaka, “Earth tides can trigger shallow thrust fault earthquakes,” Science, vol. 306, no. 5699, pp. 1164–1166, Nov. 2004.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

H. Furnes, N. R. Banerjee, K. Muehlenbachs, H. Staudigel, and M. de Wit, “Early life recorded in archean pillow lavas,” Science, vol. 304, no. 5670, pp. 578–581, Apr. 2004.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

American Counseling Association, The ACA Encyclopedia of Counseling. Alexandria, VA, USA: American Counseling Association, 2015.

An edited book

[1]

A. Grancharova, Explicit Nonlinear Model Predictive Control: Theory and Applications, vol. 429. in Lecture Notes in Control and Information Sciences, vol. 429. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2012.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

F. Ciraulo and G. Sambin, “Finiteness in a Minimalist Foundation,” in Types for Proofs and Programs: International Conference, TYPES 2007, Cividale des Friuli, Italy, May 2-5, 2007 Revised Selected Papers, M. Miculan, I. Scagnetto, and F. Honsell, Eds., in Lecture Notes in Computer Science. , Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2008, pp. 51–68.

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 Transactions on Communications.

Blog post

[1]

J. O`Callaghan, “White Dwarf Seen Tearing Apart A Comet For The First Time,” IFLScience. Accessed: Oct. 30, 2018. [Online]. Available: https://www.iflscience.com/space/white-dwarf-seen-tearing-apart-a-comet-for-the-first-time/

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, “Medicare: Impact of Changing Transportation Policy for Portable Equipment Is Uncertain,” U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, HEHS-98-82, May 1998.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

J. B. Manalo, “Ascend Physical Therapy: A Private Practice Clinic for the Next Level,” Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA, 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]

M. Kelly, “Clinton Campaign Avoided Workers’ Taxes,” New York Times, p. 127, Apr. 18, 1993.

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 Transactions on Communications
ISSN (print)	0090-6778
Scope	Electrical and Electronic Engineering