How to format your references using the International Journal of Mass Spectrometry citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for International Journal of Mass Spectrometry. 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.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
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
[1]
J.M. McDowell, Plant science. Beleaguered immunity, Science 334 (2011) 1354–1355.
A journal article with 2 authors
[1]
F. Shi, M.A. Lemmon, Biochemistry. KSR plays CRAF-ty, Science 332 (2011) 1043–1044.
A journal article with 3 authors
[1]
L.E. White, D.M. Coppola, D. Fitzpatrick, The contribution of sensory experience to the maturation of orientation selectivity in ferret visual cortex, Nature 411 (2001) 1049–1052.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
[1]
R. Chini, V. Hoffmeister, S. Kimeswenger, M. Nielbock, D. Nürnberger, L. Schmidtobreick, M. Sterzik, The formation of a massive protostar through the disk accretion of gas, Nature 429 (2004) 155–157.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
[1]
F. Glover, D. Klingman, N.V. Phillips, Network Models in Optimization and their Applications in Practice, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 1992.
An edited book
[1]
J. Stillwell, The Four Pillars of Geometry, Springer, New York, NY, 2005.
A chapter in an edited book
[1]
P. Dorey, M. Garnett, Welfare Reform, in: M. Garnett (Ed.), The British Coalition Government, 2010-2015: A Marriage of Inconvenience, Palgrave Macmillan UK, London, 2016: pp. 137–178.

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 Mass Spectrometry.

Blog post
[1]
J. Fang, Used Cigarette Butts Could Be Used To Store Energy, IFLScience (2014). https://www.iflscience.com/technology/used-cigarette-butts-could-be-used-store-energy/ (accessed October 30, 2018).

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
[1]
Government Accountability Office, Meteorological Satellites, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1995.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation
[1]
L.M. Sutton, Factors Affecting Quality Discourse and Knowledge Construction in an Online University Course, Doctoral dissertation, Northcentral University, 2012.

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
[1]
B. Sisario, Another Exclusive Yields No. 1 Album, New York Times (2016) C3.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal titleInternational Journal of Mass Spectrometry
AbbreviationInt. J. Mass Spectrom.
ISSN (print)1387-3806
ScopePhysical and Theoretical Chemistry
Spectroscopy
Condensed Matter Physics
Instrumentation

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