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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Information Systems Journal (ISJ). 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

Gilmore, G. (2004). Astronomy. The short spectacular life of a superstar. Science (New York, N.Y.), 304(5679), 1915–1916.

A journal article with 2 authors

Bayraktar, O. A., & Doe, C. Q. (2013). Combinatorial temporal patterning in progenitors expands neural diversity. Nature, 498(7455), 449–455.

A journal article with 3 authors

Baer, B., Armitage, S. A. O., & Boomsma, J. J. (2006). Sperm storage induces an immunity cost in ants. Nature, 441(7095), 872–875.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Yanagisawa, H., Davis, E. C., Starcher, B. C., Ouchi, T., Yanagisawa, M., Richardson, J. A., & Olson, E. N. (2002). Fibulin-5 is an elastin-binding protein essential for elastic fibre development in vivo. Nature, 415(6868), 168–171.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Reid, G. (2011). Dyslexia. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Tucker, A., Höppner, F., Siebes, A., & Swift, S. (Eds.). (2013). Advances in Intelligent Data Analysis XII: 12th International Symposium, IDA 2013, London, UK, October 17-19, 2013. Proceedings (Vol. 8207). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Ortolani, F., Comminiello, D., Scarpiniti, M., & Uncini, A. (2016). Frequency-Domain Adaptive Filtering in Hypercomplex Systems. In S. Bassis, A. Esposito, F. C. Morabito, & E. Pasero (Eds.), Advances in Neural Networks: Computational Intelligence for ICT (pp. 47–56). 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 Systems Journal.

Blog post

O`Callaghan, J. (2015, July 22). Strange “Haze” Spotted On Ceres Suggests Those Bright Spots Are Actually Made Of Ice. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/haze-ceres-suggests-those-bright-spots-are-actually-made-ice/

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). Stronger Measures Needed To Insure That Medical Diathermy Devices Are Safe and Effective (HRD-76-153). 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

Nam, S. (2010). A method for teaching jazz improvisation to beginning pianists in a group setting [Doctoral dissertation]. California State University, Long Beach.

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

Pilon, M. (2012, June 8). Tae Kwon Do Issue Gets Britain’s Attention. New York Times, B14.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Gilmore, 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Bayraktar & Doe, 2013; Gilmore, 2004).

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

Two authors: (Bayraktar & Doe, 2013)
Three or more authors: (Yanagisawa et al., 2002)

About the journal

Full journal title	Information Systems Journal
Abbreviation	Inf. Syst. J.
ISSN (print)	1350-1917
ISSN (online)	1365-2575
Scope	Computer Networks and Communications Information Systems Software