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

Kump, Lee R. 2008. “The Rise of Atmospheric Oxygen.” Nature 451 (7176): 277–278.

A journal article with 2 authors

Turi, László, and Adám Madarász. 2011. “Comment on ‘Does the Hydrated Electron Occupy a Cavity?’” Science (New York, N.Y.) 331 (6023): 1387; author reply 1387.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sang, Liyun, Hilary A. Coller, and James M. Roberts. 2008. “Control of the Reversibility of Cellular Quiescence by the Transcriptional Repressor HES1.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 321 (5892): 1095–1100.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Russelle, Michael P., R. Vance Morey, John M. Baker, Paul M. Porter, and Hans-Joachim G. Jung. 2007. “Comment on ‘Carbon-Negative Biofuels from Low-Input High-Diversity Grassland Biomass.’” Science (New York, N.Y.) 316 (5831): 1567; author reply 1567.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Daïan, Jean-François. 2014. Equilibrium and Transfer in Porous Media 2. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Koenitz, Hartmut, Tonguc Ibrahim Sezen, Gabriele Ferri, Mads Haahr, Digdem Sezen, and Güven C̨atak, eds. 2013. Interactive Storytelling: 6th International Conference, ICIDS 2013, Istanbul, Turkey, November 6-9, 2013, Proceedings. Vol. 8230. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Lemaire, Vincent, Christophe Salperwyck, and Alexis Bondu. 2015. “A Survey on Supervised Classification on Data Streams.” In Business Intelligence: 4th European Summer School, EBISS 2014, Berlin, Germany, July 6-11, 2014, Tutorial Lectures, edited by Esteban Zimányi and Ralf-Detlef Kutsche, 88–125. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing. 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. 2016. “A Sixth Sense? How We Can Tell That Eyes Are Watching Us.” IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/a-sixth-sense-how-we-can-tell-that-eyes-are-watching-us/.

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. 1993. Aviation Safety: FAA Can Better Prepare General Aviation Pilots for Mountain Flying Risks. RCED-94-15. 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

Ryan, Barbara A. 2012. “Computer-Based Versus Paper-Pencil Modes of Administration United States Government End of Course Exams: Student Cumulative Grade Point Averages as Predictors of Success.” Doctoral dissertation, St. Charles, MO: Lindenwood 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

Johnson, George. 2014. “Hills to Discovery Grow Steeper.” New York Times, February 18.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Kump 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Kump 2008; Turi and Madarász 2011).

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

Two authors: (Turi and Madarász 2011)
Three authors: (Sang, Coller, and Roberts 2008)
4 or more authors: (Russelle et al. 2007)

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

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