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

Smaglik, P.: ‘The best of both worlds. Seattle’Nature, 2002, 417, (6889), pp. 4–5.

A journal article with 2 authors

Dagan, T., Martin, W.: ‘Microbiology. Seeing green and red in diatom genomes’Science, 2009, 324, (5935), pp. 1651–1652.

A journal article with 3 authors

Bhowmick, N.A., Neilson, E.G., Moses, H.L.: ‘Stromal fibroblasts in cancer initiation and progression’Nature, 2004, 432, (7015), pp. 332–337.

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Yang, Y., Kim, A.H., Yamada, T., et al.: ‘A Cdc20-APC ubiquitin signaling pathway regulates presynaptic differentiation’Science, 2009, 326, (5952), pp. 575–578.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Zanotto, E.D.: ‘Crystals in Glass’ (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2013)

An edited book

Durand, M.L., Miller, J.W., Young, L.H. (Eds.): ‘Endophthalmitis’ (Springer International Publishing, 2016)

A chapter in an edited book

Cox, A., Sankaranarayanan, S., Chang, B.-Y.E.: ‘A Bit Too Precise? Bounded Verification of Quantized Digital Filters’, in Flanagan, C., König, B. (Eds.): ‘Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems: 18th International Conference, TACAS 2012, Held as Part of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2012, Tallinn, Estonia, March 24 – April 1, 2012. Proceedings’ (Springer, 2012), pp. 33–47

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.: ‘Mars Rover Observations Suggest Giant Crater Used To Hold An Ancient Lake’, https://www.iflscience.com/space/mars-rover-observations-suggest-giant-crater-used-hold-ancient-lake/, 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: ‘Indian Affairs: Key Actions Needed to Ensure Safety and Health at Indian School Facilities’ (U.S. Government Printing Office, 2016)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Kuls, M.: ‘Single item versus multiple items: An examination of validity and the impact of mood in measuring constructs’. 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

Walsh, M.W.: ‘Suffolk Cites Emergency In Finances’New York Times, 2012, p. A24.

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

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