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

Nelson, F.E.: ‘Geocryology. (Un)frozen in time’Science, 2003, 299, (5613), pp. 1673–1675.

A journal article with 2 authors

Wookey, J., Helffrich, G.: ‘Inner-core shear-wave anisotropy and texture from an observation of PKJKP waves’Nature, 2008, 454, (7206), pp. 873–876.

A journal article with 3 authors

Rokas, A., Krüger, D., Carroll, S.B.: ‘Animal evolution and the molecular signature of radiations compressed in time’Science, 2005, 310, (5756), pp. 1933–1938.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Allen, A.E., Dupont, C.L., Oborník, M., et al.: ‘Evolution and metabolic significance of the urea cycle in photosynthetic diatoms’Nature, 2011, 473, (7346), pp. 203–207.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

DiMaio, M.S., Fox, J.E., Mahoney, M.J.: ‘Prenatal Diagnosis: Cases & Clinical Challenges’ (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010)

An edited book

Lee, S., Mcbride, S. (Eds.): ‘Neo-Liberalism, State Power and Global Governance’ (Springer Netherlands, 2007)

A chapter in an edited book

Jögi, A.: ‘Tumour Hypoxia and the Hypoxia-Inducible Transcription Factors: Key Players in Cancer Progression and Metastasis’, in Mazurek, S., Shoshan, M. (Eds.): ‘Tumor Cell Metabolism: Pathways, Regulation and Biology’ (Springer, 2015), pp. 65–98

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

Andrew, E.: ‘Bizarre Chemical Reaction Looks Like A Portal To Hell’, 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: ‘Mass Transit: Federal Participation in Transit Benefit Programs’ (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1993)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Solano, E.A.: ‘Hindemith’s Sonata for Viola, ope 11, no.4 A compositional and historical perspective’. Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 2012

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

Link, K.: ‘Letting All the “What Ifs” Out to Play’New York Times, 2016, p. BR8.

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