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

Clark JM (2006) Paleontology. A different kind of croc. Science 311(5757):43–44.

A journal article with 2 authors

Custers R, Aarts H (2010) The unconscious will: how the pursuit of goals operates outside of conscious awareness. Science 329(5987):47–50.

A journal article with 3 authors

McMahon SM, Miller KH, Drake J (2001) Social science and ecology. Networking tips for social scientists and ecologists. Science 293(5535):1604–1605.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Wang J, Wang HS, Wang K, Wang FB, Xia XH (2014) Ice crystals growth driving assembly of porous nitrogen-doped graphene for catalyzing oxygen reduction probed by in situ fluorescence electrochemistry. Sci. Rep. 4:6723.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Neff DJ, Moss RC (2011) The Future of Nonprofits (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ).

An edited book

Hodicky J ed. (2015) Modelling and Simulation for Autonomous Systems: Second International Workshop, MESAS 2015, Prague, Czech Republic, April 29-30, 2015, Revised Selected Papers 1st ed. 2015. (Springer International Publishing, Cham).

A chapter in an edited book

Wu H, Wolter K (2014) Dynamic Transmission Scheduling and Link Selection in Mobile Cloud Computing. Sericola B, Telek M, Horváth G, eds. Analytical and Stochastic Modeling Techniques and Applications: 21st International Conference, ASMTA 2014, Budapest, Hungary, June 30 – July 2, 2014. Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. (Springer International Publishing, Cham), 61–79.

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

Hale T (2016) Parents Found Responsible For Their Toddler’s Meningitis Death. IFLScience. Retrieved (October 30, 2018), https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/parents-found-responsible-their-toddlers-meningitis-death/.

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 (1998) FCC: Reconsideration of the Rules and Policies for the 220-222 MHz Radio Service (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

Liggins J (2012) Self-concept education as a motivator of life effectiveness. Doctoral dissertation. (Pepperdine University, Malibu, 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

(nyt) SK (2002) World Briefing | Europe: Russia: Another Catholic Priest Barred. New York Times (September 12).

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Clark 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Clark 2006, Custers and Aarts 2010).

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

Two authors: (Custers and Aarts 2010)
Three or more authors: (Wang et al. 2014)

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