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

Crutzen, Paul J. 2002. “Geology of Mankind.” Nature 415 (6867): 23.

A journal article with 2 authors

Solé, Ricard, and Javier Macía. 2014. “Synthetic Biology: Biocircuits in Synchrony.” Nature 508 (7496): 326–327.

A journal article with 3 authors

Reichenbach, Tobias, Mauro Mobilia, and Erwin Frey. 2007. “Mobility Promotes and Jeopardizes Biodiversity in Rock-Paper-Scissors Games.” Nature 448 (7157): 1046–1049.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Zhang, Changsheng, Byron R. Griffith, Qiang Fu, Christoph Albermann, Xun Fu, In-Kyoung Lee, Lingjun Li, and Jon S. Thorson. 2006. “Exploiting the Reversibility of Natural Product Glycosyltransferase-Catalyzed Reactions.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 313 (5791): 1291–1294.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Rezzoug, Abderrezak, and Mohammed El-Hadi Zaïm. 2011. Non-Conventional Electrical Machines. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Cohen, Israel. 2009. Noise Reduction in Speech Processing. Edited by Yiteng Huang, Jingdong Chen, and Jacob Benesty. Vol. 2. Springer Topics in Signal Processing. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Lei, Huan, and George Em Karniadakis. 2015. “Multiscale Modeling of Sickle Cell Anemia.” In Modeling the Heart and the Circulatory System, edited by Alfio Quarteroni, 119–156. MS&A. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

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, Danielle. 2017. “Five Maps That Will Change How You See The World.” IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/five-maps-that-will-change-how-you-see-the-world/.

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. 2014. Advanced Imaging Technology: TSA Needs Additional Information before Procuring Next-Generation Systems. GAO-14-357. 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

Tzillah, Aisha. 2009. “The Emissions of Selected Air Pollutants from Biodiesel Fuel Usage.” Doctoral dissertation, Cincinnati, OH: University of Cincinnati.

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

Stack, Liam, and Jack Healy. 2015. “They Shared Their Working Hours, and Their Dying Moments.” New York Times, December 4.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Crutzen 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Crutzen 2002; Solé and Macía 2014).

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

Two authors: (Solé and Macía 2014)
Three authors: (Reichenbach, Mobilia, and Frey 2007)
4 or more authors: (Zhang et al. 2006)

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