How to format your references using the International Journal of Nursing Studies citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for International Journal of Nursing Studies. 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
Leitner, W., 2000. Designed to dissolve. Nature 405, 129–130.
A journal article with 2 authors
Smith, M.M., Johanson, Z., 2003. Separate evolutionary origins of teeth from evidence in fossil jawed vertebrates. Science 299, 1235–1236.
A journal article with 3 authors
Warner, D.A., Uller, T., Shine, R., 2013. Transgenerational sex determination: the embryonic environment experienced by a male affects offspring sex ratio. Sci. Rep. 3, 2709.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Sporea, R.A., Trainor, M.J., Young, N.D., Shannon, J.M., Silva, S.R.P., 2014. Source-gated transistors for order-of-magnitude performance improvements in thin-film digital circuits. Sci. Rep. 4, 4295.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Huang, F., Klette, R., Scheibe, K., 2008. Panoramic Imaging. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.
An edited book
Borowitzka, M.A., Moheimani, N.R. (Eds.), 2013. Algae for Biofuels and Energy, Developments in Applied Phycology. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht.
A chapter in an edited book
Apu, R.A., Gavrilova, M.L., 2009. Efficient Swarm Neighborhood Management Using the Layered Delaunay Triangulation, in: Gavrilova, M.L. (Ed.), Generalized Voronoi Diagram: A Geometry-Based Approach to Computational Intelligence, Studies in Computational Intelligence. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 109–129.

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 Nursing Studies.

Blog post
Andrew, E., 2015. Affectionate Orangutan Kisses Pregnant Woman’s Bump [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/affectionate-orangutan-kisses-pregnant-woman/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1999. Year 2000 Computing Crisis: Readiness Improving But Much Work Remains to Ensure Delivery of Critical Services (No. T-AIMD-99-149). U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
Sokoya, K., 2014. A Historical Analysis of the Contributions of the Black Power Movement to Higher Education: 1960 – 1980 (Doctoral dissertation). George Washington University, Washington, DC.

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
Sisario, B., 2016. Songwriters Challenge a Ruling on Licensing. New York Times B2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Leitner, 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Leitner, 2000; Smith and Johanson, 2003).

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

  • Two authors: (Smith and Johanson, 2003)
  • Three or more authors: (Sporea et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleInternational Journal of Nursing Studies
AbbreviationInt. J. Nurs. Stud.
ISSN (print)0020-7489
ScopeGeneral Nursing

Other styles