How to format your references using the Information Sciences citation style

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

[1]

M. Wadman, Biochemist strikes gold, Nature. 441 (2006) 689.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

R.J. Aitken, J.A. Marshall Graves, The future of sex, Nature. 415 (2002) 963.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

A.M. Lohrer, S.F. Thrush, M.M. Gibbs, Bioturbators enhance ecosystem function through complex biogeochemical interactions, Nature. 431 (2004) 1092–1095.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

C.A. Mueller, P. Broz, S.A. Müller, P. Ringler, F. Erne-Brand, I. Sorg, M. Kuhn, A. Engel, G.R. Cornelis, The V-antigen of Yersinia forms a distinct structure at the tip of injectisome needles, Science. 310 (2005) 674–676.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

J.A. Stratton, Electromagnetic Theory, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2015.

An edited book

[1]

D. Wood, ed., Linking Enterprise Data, Springer US, Boston, MA, 2010.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

T. Heimfarth, D. Orfanus, F.R. Wagner, Resource-Aware Clustering of Wireless Sensor Networks Based on Division of Labor in Social Insects, in: M. Hinchey, A. Pagnoni, F.J. Rammig, H. Schmeck (Eds.), Biologically-Inspired Collaborative Computing: IFIP 20th World Computer Congress, Second IFIP TC 10 International Conference on Biologically-Inspired Collaborative Computing, September 8–9, 2008, Milano, Italy, Springer US, Boston, MA, 2008: pp. 45–58.

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 Sciences.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, Researchers Are Looking To A Surprisingly Old Idea For The Next Generation Of Ships: Wind Power, IFLScience. (2015). https://www.iflscience.com/technology/researchers-are-looking-surprisingly-old-idea-next-generation-ships-wind-power/ (accessed October 30, 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

[1]

Government Accountability Office, Advance Sheets: Volume 74, Decisions of the Comptroller General of the United States, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1995.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

K.U. Chirwa, Encumbered Existence: A Three Movement Work for Jazz Orchestra, Doctoral dissertation, University of Louisiana, 2017.

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

[1]

M.J.O. Murphy, Weekend Entertainments From the Archives of The New York Times, New York Times. (2015) C27.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	Information Sciences
Abbreviation	Inf. Sci. (Ny)
ISSN (print)	0020-0255
Scope	Artificial Intelligence Computer Science Applications Software Information Systems and Management Control and Systems Engineering Theoretical Computer Science