How to format your references using the IET Software citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for IET Software. 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 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

Ehlers, M.D.: ‘Eppendorf 2003 prize-winning essay. Ubiquitin and the deconstruction of synapses’Science, 2003, 302, (5646), pp. 800–801.

A journal article with 2 authors

Huneycutt, A.J., Saykally, R.J.: ‘Chemistry. Building solutions--one molecule at a time’Science, 2003, 299, (5611), pp. 1329–1330.

A journal article with 3 authors

Haince, J.-F., Rouleau, M., Poirier, G.G.: ‘Transcription. Gene expression needs a break to unwind before carrying on’Science, 2006, 312, (5781), pp. 1752–1753.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Eckstein-Ludwig, U., Webb, R.J., Van Goethem, I.D.A., et al.: ‘Artemisinins target the SERCA of Plasmodium falciparum’Nature, 2003, 424, (6951), pp. 957–961.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Tyson, H.: ‘Microsoft® Word 2010 Bible’ (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2010)

An edited book

Azar, A.T. (Ed.): ‘Modeling and Control of Dialysis Systems: Volume 2: Biofeedback Systems and Soft Computing Techniques of Dialysis’ (Springer, 2013)

A chapter in an edited book

Spaldin, N.A.: ‘Analogies and Differences between Ferroelectrics and Ferromagnets’, in Rabe, K.M., Ahn, C.H., Triscone, J.-M. (Eds.): ‘Physics of Ferroelectrics: A Modern Perspective’ (Springer, 2007), pp. 175–218

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 Software.

Blog post

Hale, T.: ‘The Weather Channel Shuts Down Breitbart For Misleading Climate Change Article’, 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: ‘Troops-To-Teachers: Program Brings More Men and Minorities to the Teaching Workforce, but Education Could Improve Management to Enhance Results’ (U.S. Government Printing Office, 2006)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Rey, D.: ‘Chaos, Observability and Symplectic Structure in Optimal Estimation’. Doctoral dissertation, University of California San Diego, 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

Kelly, S.: ‘Mighty Joe Mishbooker’New York Times, 1995, p. 724.

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 Software
Abbreviation	IET Softw.
ISSN (print)	1751-8806
Scope	Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design