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

Bruins, Hendrik J. 2010. “Anthropology. Dating Pharaonic Egypt.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 328 (5985): 1489–1490.

A journal article with 2 authors

An, Seong J., and Wolfhard Almers. 2004. “Tracking SNARE Complex Formation in Live Endocrine Cells.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 306 (5698): 1042–1046.

A journal article with 3 authors

Biteau, Benoît, Jean Labarre, and Michel B. Toledano. 2003. “ATP-Dependent Reduction of Cysteine-Sulphinic Acid by S. Cerevisiae Sulphiredoxin.” Nature 425 (6961): 980–984.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Shinya, Kyoko, Masahito Ebina, Shinya Yamada, Masao Ono, Noriyuki Kasai, and Yoshihiro Kawaoka. 2006. “Avian Flu: Influenza Virus Receptors in the Human Airway.” Nature 440 (7083): 435–436.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Florczyk, Stefan. 2004. Robot Vision. Weinheim, FRG: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Scerri, Eric, and Lee McIntyre, eds. 2015. Philosophy of Chemistry: Growth of a New Discipline. Vol. 306. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Zhang, Lixian, Ting Yang, Peng Shi, and Yanzheng Zhu. 2016. “Composite TPs Case.” In Analysis and Design of Markov Jump Systems with Complex Transition Probabilities, edited by Ting Yang, Peng Shi, and Yanzheng Zhu, 71–85. Studies in Systems, Decision and Control. 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

Luntz, Stephen. 2014. “Dinosaurs Co-Existed By Dividing Their Dinners.” IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/dinosaur-dinner-division-key-success-waiting-paper-go-online/.

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. 1977. Improved Management of Computer Resources Needed To Enhance Marine Corps’ Efficiency and Effectiveness. LCD-76-124. 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

Doss, Adeyemi. 2015. “Trapped within the White Gaze: A DuBoisian Approach to Understanding the Existential Burden of Being a Black Man in America.” Doctoral dissertation, Bloomington, IN: Indiana 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

Sugin, Linda. 2016. “An Uncharitable Foundation.” New York Times, September 30.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bruins 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Bruins 2010; An and Almers 2004).

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

Two authors: (An and Almers 2004)
Three authors: (Biteau, Labarre, and Toledano 2003)
4 or more authors: (Shinya 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