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

Diallinas, G. (2008). Biochemistry. An almost-complete movie. Science (New York, N.Y.), 322(5908), 1644–1645.

A journal article with 2 authors

Cantrell, R. P., & Reeves, T. G. (2002). The rice genome. The cereal of the world’s poor takes center stage. Science (New York, N.Y.), 296(5565), 53.

A journal article with 3 authors

Rakitzis, T. P., van den Brom, A. J., & Janssen, M. H. M. (2004). Directional dynamics in the photodissociation of oriented molecules. Science (New York, N.Y.), 303(5665), 1852–1854.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Zhang, P., Crespi, V. H., Chang, E., Louie, S. G., & Cohen, M. L. (2001). Computational design of direct-bandgap semiconductors that lattice-match silicon. Nature, 409(6816), 69–71.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Grove, L. C. (1997). Groups and Characters. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Junger-Tas, J., & Decker, S. H. (Eds.). (2006). International Handbook of Juvenile Justice. Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Sorensen, K. A., Mohankumar, S., & Thangaraj, S. R. (2016). Physical, Mechanical and Cultural Control of Vegetable Insects. In R. Muniappan & E. A. Heinrichs (Eds.), Integrated Pest Management of Tropical Vegetable Crops (pp. 131–148). Springer Netherlands.

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

Hale, T. (2017, January 5). UAE Outlaw Keeping Dangerous Animals As Pets. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/uae-outlaw-keeping-dangerous-animals-as-pets/

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. (1997). Highway Safety: NHTSA’s Activities Concerning State Motorcycle Helmet Laws (RCED-97-185R). 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

Diaz, D. (2015). A discrete hollow—Los Angeles [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

Rothenberg, B. (2017, July 10). Top-Seeded Kerber Tumbles Out of Fourth Round Amid the Usual Havoc. New York Times, B11.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Diallinas, 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Cantrell & Reeves, 2002; Diallinas, 2008).

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

Two authors: (Cantrell & Reeves, 2002)
Three authors: (Rakitzis et al., 2004)
6 or more authors: (Zhang et al., 2001)

About the journal

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