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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for International Journal of Play. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Racaniello, V. (2011). Virology. An exit strategy for measles virus. Science (New York, N.Y.), 334(6063), 1650–1651.

A journal article with 2 authors

Bininda-Emonds, O. R. P., & Purvis, A. (2012). Comment on “Impacts of the Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution and KPg extinction on mammal diversification.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 337(6090), 34; author reply 34.

A journal article with 3 authors

Jiang, X., Wang, Y., & Li, M. (2014). Selecting water-alcohol mixed solvent for synthesis of polydopamine nano-spheres using solubility parameter. Scientific Reports, 4, 6070.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

McClure, S. M., Laibson, D. I., Loewenstein, G., & Cohen, J. D. (2004). Separate neural systems value immediate and delayed monetary rewards. Science (New York, N.Y.), 306(5695), 503–507.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Rossi, R. J. (2006). Theorems, Corollaries, Lemmas, and Methods of Proof. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

McEwan, I. J., & Kumar, R. (Eds.). (2015). Nuclear Receptors: From Structure to the Clinic (1st ed. 2015). Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Farhangian, M., Purvis, M., Purvis, M., & Savarimuthu, T. B. R. (2015). The Effects of Temperament and Team Formation Mechanism on Collaborative Learning of Knowledge and Skill in Short-Term Projects. In F. Koch, C. Guttmann, & D. Busquets (Eds.), Advances in Social Computing and Multiagent Systems: 6th International Workshop on Collaborative Agents Research and Development, CARE 2015 and Second International Workshop on Multiagent Foundations of Social Computing, MFSC 2015, Istanbul, Turkey, May 4, 2015, Revised Selected Papers (pp. 48–65). 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 Play.

Blog post

Hamilton, K. (2016, August 23). Up To 40% Of Some Herbal Supplements Are Mislabelled Or Contain Adulterants. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/up-to-40-percent-of-some-herbal-supplements-are-mislabelled-or-contain-adulterants/

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. (2001). DOD Information Technology: Software and Systems Process Improvement Programs Vary in Use of Best Practices (GAO-01-116). 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

Wadhwa, P. H. (2015). Secure building automation system using Tesla protocol [Doctoral dissertation]. California State University, Long Beach.

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

Alvarez, L. (2017, January 9). Pandemonium Followed Rumor of Second Airport Attacker. New York Times, A9.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Racaniello, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Bininda-Emonds & Purvis, 2012; Racaniello, 2011).

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

Two authors: (Bininda-Emonds & Purvis, 2012)
Three authors: (Jiang et al., 2014)
6 or more authors: (McClure et al., 2004)

About the journal

Full journal title	International Journal of Play
Abbreviation	Int. J. Play
ISSN (print)	2159-4937
ISSN (online)	2159-4953
Scope