How to format your references using the International Journal of Africa Nursing Sciences citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for International Journal of Africa Nursing 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Fink, D. W., Jr. (2009). FDA regulation of stem cell-based products. Science (New York, N.Y.), 324(5935), 1662–1663.
A journal article with 2 authors
Amamoto, R., & Arlotta, P. (2014). Development-inspired reprogramming of the mammalian central nervous system. Science (New York, N.Y.), 343(6170), 1239882.
A journal article with 3 authors
Kelly, B. P., Whiteley, A., & Tallmon, D. (2010). The Arctic melting pot. Nature, 468(7326), 891.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Miyamaru, F., Morita, H., Nishiyama, Y., Nishida, T., Nakanishi, T., Kitano, M., & Takeda, M. W. (2014). Ultrafast optical control of group delay of narrow-band terahertz waves. Scientific Reports, 4, 4346.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Dvorak, R., & Lhotka, C. (2013). Celestial Dynamics. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.
An edited book
Bazzan, A. L. C., Craven, M., & Martins, N. F. (Eds.). (2008). Advances in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology: Third Brazilian Symposium on Bioinformatics, BSB 2008, Santo André, Brazil, August 28-30, 2008. Proceedings (Vol. 5167). Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Fan, X. J., Tee, T. Y., Shi, X. Q., & Xie, B. (2010). Modeling of Moisture Diffusion and Whole-Field Vapor Pressure in Plastic Packages of IC Devices. In X. J. Fan & E. Suhir (Eds.), Moisture Sensitivity of Plastic Packages of IC Devices (pp. 91–112). Springer US.

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 International Journal of Africa Nursing Sciences.

Blog post
Carpineti, A. (2016, April 29). We Are Almost Certainly Not Alone In The Universe. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/we-are-probably-not-alone-universe/

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. (1984). ASCS Needs Better Information To Adequately Assess Proposed County and State Office Automation (IMTEC-84-11). 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
Dorin, J. (2014). Attachment style and perceived stress in college students [Doctoral dissertation]. Pepperdine University.

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
Feeney, K. (2007, July 15). Falafel, Panini Style. New York Times, NJ12.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Fink, 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Amamoto & Arlotta, 2014; Fink, 2009).

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

  • Two authors: (Amamoto & Arlotta, 2014)
  • Three authors: (Kelly et al., 2010)
  • 6 or more authors: (Miyamaru et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleInternational Journal of Africa Nursing Sciences
ISSN (print)2214-1391
ScopeGeneral Nursing

Other styles