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

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

A. Mantovani, “Investigating T-cell memory,” Nature, vol. 407, no. 6800, p. 40, Sep. 2000.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

L. Villier and D. Korn, “Morphological disparity of ammonoids and the mark of Permian mass extinctions,” Science, vol. 306, no. 5694, pp. 264–266, Oct. 2004.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

P. A. Davison, C. N. Hunter, and P. Horton, “Overexpression of beta-carotene hydroxylase enhances stress tolerance in Arabidopsis,” Nature, vol. 418, no. 6894, pp. 203–206, Jul. 2002.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

H.-Y. Hwang, S. K. Olson, J. D. Esko, and H. R. Horvitz, “Caenorhabditis elegans early embryogenesis and vulval morphogenesis require chondroitin biosynthesis,” Nature, vol. 423, no. 6938, pp. 439–443, May 2003.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

R. J. Wootton and C. Smith, Reproductive Biology of Teleost Fishes. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2014.

An edited book

[1]

C. Schultz and K. Vind, Eds., Institutions, Equilibria and Efficiency: Essays in Honor of Birgit Grodal, vol. 25. in Studies in Economic Theory, vol. 25. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2006.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

K. F. Tóth, D. Pezic, E. Stuwe, and A. Webster, “The piRNA Pathway Guards the Germline Genome Against Transposable Elements,” in Non-coding RNA and the Reproductive System, D. Wilhelm and P. Bernard, Eds., in Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology. , Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2016, pp. 51–77.

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 Information Theory.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, “Mangy Marsupials: Wombats Are Catching A Deadly Disease, And We Urgently Need A Plan To Help Them,” 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, “[Comments on Agency Participation in SBIR Program],” U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, B-230594.2, Mar. 1988.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

L. Johnson, “The Relationship between Mock Jurors’ Locus of Control, Belief in a Just World, and an NGRI Verdict,” Doctoral dissertation, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL, 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]

C. Kelly, “A Remodeling Gift to Remind Tarrytown of a Church’s History,” New York Times, p. 14WE11, Jan. 13, 2008.

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 Transactions on Information Theory
Abbreviation	IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory
ISSN (print)	0018-9448
Scope	Computer Science Applications Information Systems Library and Information Sciences