How to format your references using the Instructional Science citation style

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

Kwok, S. (2004). The synthesis of organic and inorganic compounds in evolved stars. Nature, 430(7003), 985–991.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kovács, A. M., & Mehler, J. (2009). Flexible learning of multiple speech structures in bilingual infants. Science (New York, N.Y.), 325(5940), 611–612.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hernlund, J. W., Thomas, C., & Tackley, P. J. (2005). A doubling of the post-perovskite phase boundary and structure of the Earth’s lowermost mantle. Nature, 434(7035), 882–886.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Nicol, S., Pauly, T., Bindoff, N. L., Wright, S., Thiele, D., Hosie, G. W., et al. (2000). Ocean circulation off east Antarctica affects ecosystem structure and sea-ice extent. Nature, 406(6795), 504–507.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Tms. (2014). TMS 2014 Supplemental Proceedings. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Biondi-Zoccai, G. (Ed.). (2016). Umbrella Reviews: Evidence Synthesis with Overviews of Reviews and Meta-Epidemiologic Studies (1st ed. 2016.). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Jakhu, R. S., & Pelton, J. N. (2014). Licensing, Registration, and Frequency Use Regulation. In J. N. Pelton (Ed.), Small Satellites and Their Regulation (pp. 49–59). New York, NY: Springer.

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 Instructional Science.

Blog post

Fang, J. (2015, May 2). Study Reveals How Traveling To Mars Could Damage Astronaut’s Brains. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/how-traveling-mars-damages-your-brain/. 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. (1987). ADP Budget: SSA’s Information Technology Systems Budget Requests and Obligations (No. IMTEC-87-15FS). 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

Miller, T. (2014). A qualitative phenomenological study: Hiring nurses re-entering the workforce after chemical dependence (Doctoral dissertation). University of Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ.

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

Hodara, S. (2013, November 17). Seeing and Being Seen, Across Millenniums. New York Times, p. WE10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Kwok 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Kovács and Mehler 2009; Kwok 2004).

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

Two authors: (Kovács and Mehler 2009)
Three or more authors: (Nicol et al. 2000)

About the journal

Full journal title	Instructional Science
Abbreviation	Instr. Sci.
ISSN (print)	0020-4277
ISSN (online)	1573-1952
Scope	Developmental and Educational Psychology Education