How to format your references using the International Journal of General Systems citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for International Journal of General Systems. 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

McSwain, M. Virginia. 2014. “Astrophysics: Black Hole Found Orbiting a Fast Rotator.” Nature 505 (7483): 296–297.

A journal article with 2 authors

Shcheka, Svyatoslav S., and Hans Keppler. 2012. “The Origin of the Terrestrial Noble-Gas Signature.” Nature 490 (7421): 531–534.

A journal article with 3 authors

Waelti, P., A. Dickinson, and W. Schultz. 2001. “Dopamine Responses Comply with Basic Assumptions of Formal Learning Theory.” Nature 412 (6842): 43–48.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Economo, Michael N., Sarada Viswanathan, Bosiljka Tasic, Erhan Bas, Johan Winnubst, Vilas Menon, Lucas T. Graybuck, et al. 2018. “Distinct Descending Motor Cortex Pathways and Their Roles in Movement.” Nature 563 (7729): 79–84.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Reinhardt, Hans-Wolf. 2010. Ingenieurbaustoffe. Berlin, Germany: Ernst & Sohn Verlag für Architektur und technische Wissenschaften GmbH & Co. KG.

An edited book

Finster, Felix, Olaf Müller, Marc Nardmann, Jürgen Tolksdorf, and Eberhard Zeidler, eds. 2012. Quantum Field Theory and Gravity: Conceptual and Mathematical Advances in the Search for a Unified Framework. Basel: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Segredo, Eduardo, Carlos Segura, and Coromoto León. 2011. “On the Comparison of Parallel Island-Based Models for the Multiobjectivised Antenna Positioning Problem.” In Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems: 15th International Conference, KES 2011, Kaiserslautern, Germany, September 12-14, 2011, Proceedings, Part I, edited by Andreas König, Andreas Dengel, Knut Hinkelmann, Koichi Kise, Robert J. Howlett, and Lakhmi C. Jain, 32–41. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Berlin, Heidelberg: 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 International Journal of General Systems.

Blog post

Andrew, Elise. 2015. “Denied By The Nazis, 102-Year-Old Becomes World’s Oldest PhD Recipient.” IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/denied-nazis-102-year-old-becomes-worlds-oldest-phd-recipient/.

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. 2010. Higher Education: Institutions’ Reported Data Collection Burden Is Higher Than Estimated but Can Be Reduced through Increased Coordination. GAO-10-871. 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

Hung, Hui-Chih. 2006. “Allocation of Jobs and Resources to Work Centers.” Doctoral dissertation, Columbus, OH: Ohio State 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

Otis, John. 2016. “A Tutor Is Inspired to Keep Learning.” New York Times, December 14.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (McSwain 2014).
This sentence cites two references (McSwain 2014; Shcheka and Keppler 2012).

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

Two authors: (Shcheka and Keppler 2012)
Three authors: (Waelti, Dickinson, and Schultz 2001)
4 or more authors: (Economo et al. 2018)

About the journal

Full journal title	International Journal of General Systems
Abbreviation	Int. J. Gen. Syst.
ISSN (print)	0308-1079
ISSN (online)	1563-5104
Scope	Computer Science Applications Information Systems Control and Systems Engineering Modelling and Simulation Theoretical Computer Science