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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for International Journal of Science Education. 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

Coe, H. (2011). Atmospheric science. Aerosol chemistry and the Deepwater Horizon spill. Science (New York, N.Y.), 331(6022), 1273–1274.

A journal article with 2 authors

Klagsbrun, M., & Moses, M. A. (2008). Obituary: M. Judah Folkman (1933-2008). Nature, 451(7180), 781.

A journal article with 3 authors

Nakagome, S., Mano, S., & Hasegawa, M. (2013). Comment on “Nuclear genomic sequences reveal that polar bears are an old and distinct bear lineage.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 339(6127), 1522.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Sakulkhu, U., Mahmoudi, M., Maurizi, L., Salaklang, J., & Hofmann, H. (2014). Protein corona composition of superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles with various physico-chemical properties and coatings. Scientific Reports, 4, 5020.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Mohan, N. (2014). Advanced Electric Drives. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Iliopoulos, C. S., & Smyth, W. F. (Eds.). (2011). Combinatorial Algorithms: 21st International Workshop, IWOCA 2010, London, UK, July 26-28, 2010, Revised Selected Papers (Vol. 6460). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Pólya, G., Tarjan, R. E., & Woods, D. R. (2010). Principle of Inclusion and Exclusion. In R. E. Tarjan & D. R. Woods (Eds.), Notes on Introductory Combinatorics (pp. 32–40). Birkhäuser.

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 Science Education.

Blog post

Hamilton, K. (2016, September 21). This Tool Sends You An Alert When Your Data Is Leaked Online. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/this-tool-sends-you-an-alert-when-your-data-is-leaked-online/

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. (1972). Cost-Benefit Analysis Used in Support of the Space Shuttle Program (B-173677). 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

Burnley, T. (2012). Psychotherapist as Modern-Day Shaman [Doctoral dissertation]. Pacifica Graduate Institute.

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

Montague, J. (2016, November 26). One History, Two Clubs, Split by War. New York Times, SP1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Coe, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Coe, 2011; Klagsbrun & Moses, 2008).

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

Two authors: (Klagsbrun & Moses, 2008)
Three or more authors: (Sakulkhu et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	International Journal of Science Education
Abbreviation	Int. J. Sci. Educ.
ISSN (print)	0950-0693
ISSN (online)	1464-5289
Scope	Education