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

Blanke, S. R. (2009). Cell biology. Expanding functionality within the looking-glass universe. Science (New York, N.Y.), 325(5947), 1505–1506.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hughes, R., & Nordholt, J. (2011). Physics. Refining quantum cryptography. Science (New York, N.Y.), 333(6049), 1584–1586.

A journal article with 3 authors

Francis, N. J., Kingston, R. E., & Woodcock, C. L. (2004). Chromatin compaction by a polycomb group protein complex. Science (New York, N.Y.), 306(5701), 1574–1577.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Sternberg, A., Gal-Yam, A., Simon, J. D., Leonard, D. C., Quimby, R. M., Phillips, M. M., et al. (2011). Circumstellar material in type Ia supernovae via sodium absorption features. Science (New York, N.Y.), 333(6044), 856–859.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Davis, T. G. (2010). Java® and Mac OS® X. Indianapolis, IN, USA: Wiley Publishing, Inc.

An edited book

Taylor, M. (2015). A Year in the Life of a Third Space Urban Teacher Residency: Using Inquiry to Reinvent Teacher Education. (E. J. Klein, Ed.). Rotterdam: SensePublishers.

A chapter in an edited book

Shah, R., Eldridge, D., Palombo, E., & Harding, I. (2015). Physicochemical Stability. In D. Eldridge, E. Palombo, & I. Harding (Eds.), Lipid Nanoparticles: Production, Characterization and Stability (pp. 75–97). 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

Andrew, D. (2016, November 17). Think The World’s In A Mess? Here Are Four Things You Can Do About It. IFLScience. IFLScience. 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. (1987). [Comments on Charging Cellular Telephone Installation to Senate Contingent Fund] (No. B-227763). 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

Roth, M. M. (2017). Depositional Environment of the Carbonate Cap Rock at the Pine Prairie Field, Evangeline Parish, Louisiana: Implications of Salt Diapirism on Cook Mountain Reservoir Genesis (Doctoral dissertation). University of Louisiana, Lafayette, LA.

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

Johnson, G. (2015, December 18). Cancer, Scourge of Affluent Nations. New York Times, p. D3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Blanke 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Blanke 2009; Hughes and Nordholt 2011).

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

Two authors: (Hughes and Nordholt 2011)
Three or more authors: (Sternberg et al. 2011)

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