How to format your references using the Information Retrieval citation style

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

Dalton, R. (2000). Los Alamos “loses” key weapons data. Nature, 405(6788), 725.

A journal article with 2 authors

Sander, P. M., & Clauss, M. (2008). Paleontology. Sauropod gigantism. Science (New York, N.Y.), 322(5899), 200–201.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sorenson, M. D., Sefc, K. M., & Payne, R. B. (2003). Speciation by host switch in brood parasitic indigobirds. Nature, 424(6951), 928–931.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Giraud, E., Fardoux, J., Fourrier, N., Hannibal, L., Genty, B., Bouyer, P., et al. (2002). Bacteriophytochrome controls photosystem synthesis in anoxygenic bacteria. Nature, 417(6885), 202–205.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

da Silva, L. S., Simões, R., & Gervásio, H. (2014). Design of Steel Structures. D-69451 Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH.

An edited book

Liamputtong, P. (Ed.). (2016). Children and Young People Living with HIV/AIDS: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Zerlenga, O. (2016). Federico Commandino (1509–1575). In M. Cigola (Ed.), Distinguished Figures in Descriptive Geometry and Its Applications for Mechanism Science: From the Middle Ages to the 17th Century (pp. 99–128). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

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 Information Retrieval.

Blog post

Carpineti, C. (2017, June 6). Watch This Cyborg Dragonfly Drone Take Flight. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/watch-this-cyborg-dragonfly-drone-take-flight/. Accessed 30 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. (1976). Assessment of the Impact Aid Program (No. B-164031(1)). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Chiang, I.-C. (2010). A historical technique from a modern perspective: The transcription scordatura in Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra in E-flat major, K. 364 (Doctoral dissertation). University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH.

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

Eligon, J. (2017, February 14). In the Hands of a Pro. New York Times, p. D1.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Dalton 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Dalton 2000; Sander and Clauss 2008).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Sander and Clauss 2008)
Three or more authors: (Giraud et al. 2002)

About the journal

Full journal title	Information Retrieval
Abbreviation	Inf. Retr. Boston.
ISSN (print)	1386-4564
ISSN (online)	1573-7659
Scope	Information Systems Library and Information Sciences