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

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

Clarke J (2003) Physics. Flux qubit completes the hat trick. Science 299(5614):1850–1851.

A journal article with 2 authors

Shaw RJ, Cantley LC (2006) Ras, PI(3)K and mTOR signalling controls tumour cell growth. Nature 441(7092):424–430.

A journal article with 3 authors

Robinson CV, Sali A, Baumeister W (2007) The molecular sociology of the cell. Nature 450(7172):973–982.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Piao S, Ciais P, Huang Y, Shen Z, Peng S, Li J, Zhou L, et al. (2010) The impacts of climate change on water resources and agriculture in China. Nature 467(7311):43–51.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Scott DW (2008) Color Atlas of Farm Animal Dermatology (Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford, UK).

An edited book

Athanas P, Pnevmatikatos D, Sklavos N eds. (2013) Embedded Systems Design with FPGAs (Springer, New York, NY).

A chapter in an edited book

Chelala P (2008) A Europe of Values: From Shared History to Common Objectives. Carballo M, Hjelmar U, eds. Public Opinion Polling in a Globalized World. (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg), 43–59.

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 Research.

Blog post

Andrew D (2017) Using Electricity, Not Molecules, To Switch Cells On And Off. IFLScience. Retrieved (October 30, 2018), https://www.iflscience.com/technology/using-electricity-not-molecules-to-switch-cells-on-and-off/.

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 (2016) Polar Satellites: NOAA Faces Challenges and Uncertainties that Could Affect the Availability of Critical Weather Data (U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC).

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

McConnell ME (2017) A Dual Diagnosis of Hearing Loss and an Autism Spectrum Disorder: An Illustrative Case Study. 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

Brantley B (2017) Young Con Man as Tragic Hero. New York Times (April 26).

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Clarke 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Clarke 2003, Shaw and Cantley 2006).

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

Two authors: (Shaw and Cantley 2006)
Three or more authors: (Piao et al. 2010)

About the journal

Full journal title	Information Systems Research
Abbreviation	Inf. Syst. Res.
ISSN (print)	1047-7047
ISSN (online)	1526-5536
Scope	Computer Networks and Communications Information Systems Information Systems and Management Library and Information Sciences