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

Stevens, M. J. (2014). Materials science. How shape affects microtubule and nanoparticle assembly. Science (New York, N.Y.), 343(6174), 981–982.

A journal article with 2 authors

Goring, D. R., & Walker, J. C. (2004). Plant sciences. Self-rejection--a new kinase connection. Science (New York, N.Y.), 303(5663), 1474–1475.

A journal article with 3 authors

Panda, S., Hogenesch, J. B., & Kay, S. A. (2002). Circadian rhythms from flies to human. Nature, 417(6886), 329–335.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Beddington, J., Cooper, C. L., Field, J., Goswami, U., Huppert, F. A., Jenkins, R., Jones, H. S., Kirkwood, T. B. L., Sahakian, B. J., & Thomas, S. M. (2008). The mental wealth of nations. Nature, 455(7216), 1057–1060.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

McGeough, J. A. (2013). The Engineering of Human Joint Replacements. John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

An edited book

Satapathy, S. C., & Das, S. (Eds.). (2016). Proceedings of First International Conference on Information and Communication Technology for Intelligent Systems: Volume 2 (Vol. 51). Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Minet, O., Dressler, C., Beuthan, J., Zabaryło, U., Zukiene, R., & Midaziene, V. (2010). Fluorescence Imaging of Calcium Loading and Mitochondrial Depolarization in Cancer Cells Exposed to Heat Stress. In C. D. Geddes (Ed.), Reviews in Fluorescence 2008 (pp. 89–118). Springer.

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

Carpineti, A. (2017, January 3). Researchers Build A Wire Three Atoms Wide. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/researchers-build-a-wire-three-atoms-wide/

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. (2016). Information Technology: IRS Needs to Improve Its Processes for Prioritizing and Reporting Performance of Investments (GAO-16-545). 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

Newberry, G. C. (2014). Students’ experiences with simulation education [Doctoral dissertation]. Capella University.

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

Corkery, M., & Walsh, M. W. (2017, May 5). Puerto Rico Message: An Easy Bet Might Lose. New York Times, B1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Stevens, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Goring & Walker, 2004; Stevens, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Goring & Walker, 2004)
Three authors: (Panda et al., 2002)
6 or more authors: (Beddington et al., 2008)

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