How to format your references using the Information Retrieval Journal citation style

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

Buckingham, S. (2010). Call in the women. Nature, 468(7323), 502.

A journal article with 2 authors

Margoliash, D., & Hale, M. E. (2008). Neuroscience. Vertebrate vocalizations. Science (New York, N.Y.), 321(5887), 347–348.

A journal article with 3 authors

Lee, H., Zones, S. I., & Davis, M. E. (2003). A combustion-free methodology for synthesizing zeolites and zeolite-like materials. Nature, 425(6956), 385–388.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

O’Hora, D., Dale, R., Piiroinen, P. T., & Connolly, F. (2013). Local dynamics in decision making: The evolution of preference within and across decisions. Scientific reports, 3, 2210.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wesche, R. (2015). Physical Properties of High-Temperature Superconductors. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Tiropanis, T., Vakali, A., Sartori, L., & Burnap, P. (Eds.). (2015). Internet Science: Second International Conference, INSCI 2015, Brussels, Belgium, May 27-29, 2015, Proceedings (Vol. 9089). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Stahl, G. (2009). Interactional Methods and Social Practices in VMT. In G. Stahl (Ed.), Studying Virtual Math Teams (pp. 41–55). Boston, MA: Springer US.

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 Journal.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2013, November 9). Gene Used In Embryogenesis Can Repair Adult Tissue. 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. (2012). Highway Projects: Survey of State Departments of Transportation (GAO-12-637SP, June 2012), an E-supplement to GAO-12-593 (No. GAO-12-637SP). 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

Ekstrom, J. E. (2009). Factors influencing retention in a residential treatment program (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Shear, M. D., Thrush, G., & Haberman, M. (2017, August 17). Trump Response To Violent Rally Shocks His Allies. New York Times, p. A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Buckingham 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Buckingham 2010; Margoliash and Hale 2008).

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

Two authors: (Margoliash and Hale 2008)
Three or more authors: (O’Hora et al. 2013)

About the journal

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