How to format your references using the IET Signal Processing citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for IET Signal Processing. 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	Download the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Stewart, M.: ‘Structural biology. Nuclear trafficking’Science, 2003, 302, (5650), pp. 1513–1514.

A journal article with 2 authors

Webb, J., Domanski, M.: ‘Paleontology. Fire and stone’Science, 2009, 325, (5942), pp. 820–821.

A journal article with 3 authors

Coulson, T., Lindström, J., Cotgreave, P.: ‘Ecology. Seeking new recruits’Science, 2002, 295, (5562), pp. 2023–2024.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Chang, C., Yu, T.W., Bargmann, C.I., Tessier-Lavigne, M.: ‘Inhibition of netrin-mediated axon attraction by a receptor protein tyrosine phosphatase’Science, 2004, 305, (5680), pp. 103–106.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Cornier, J., Owen, A., Kwade, A., Van de Voorde, M.: ‘Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology: Innovation and Production’ (Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, 2017)

An edited book

Graham, R.L., Nešetřil, J., Butler, S. (Eds.): ‘The Mathematics of Paul Erdős I’ (Springer, 2013, 2nd ed. 2013)

A chapter in an edited book

Lerner, N.: ‘Some Facts About the Wick Calculus’, in Helffer, B., Lamoureux, M.P., Lerner, N., Toft, J., Rodino, L., Wong, M.W. (Eds.): ‘Pseudo-Differential Operators: Quantization and Signals’ (Springer, 2008), pp. 135–174

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 IET Signal Processing.

Blog post

Carpineti, A.: ‘Spiral Around New Star Hints At A New Planet Formation Mechanism’, accessed October 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

Government Accountability Office: ‘Tax System Modernization: An Assessment of IRS’ Design Master Plan’ (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Rafibakhsh, N.: ‘Industrial Applications of Microsoft Xbox Kinect Sensor’. Doctoral dissertation, Southern Illinois University, 2013

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

Troy, T.: ‘How Conservatives Can Find Their Way’New York Times, 2017, p. SR3.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [2].
This sentence cites two references [2, 4].
This sentence cites four references [2, 4, 6, 8].

About the journal

Full journal title	IET Signal Processing
ISSN (print)	1751-9675
Scope	Signal Processing Electrical and Electronic Engineering