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

Castro Neto, A. H. (2011). Physics. Another spin on graphene. Science (New York, N.Y.), 332(6027), 315–316.

A journal article with 2 authors

Sheinin, M. Y., & Wang, M. D. (2012). Biochemistry. A DNA twist diffuses and hops. Science (New York, N.Y.), 338(6103), 56–57.

A journal article with 3 authors

Howat, I. M., Joughin, I., & Scambos, T. A. (2007). Rapid changes in ice discharge from Greenland outlet glaciers. Science (New York, N.Y.), 315(5818), 1559–1561.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Lee, M. S., Kwon, Y. T., Li, M., Peng, J., Friedlander, R. M., & Tsai, L. H. (2000). Neurotoxicity induces cleavage of p35 to p25 by calpain. Nature, 405(6784), 360–364.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Blundell, A., Harrison, R., & Turney, B. (2010). The Essential Guide to Becoming a Doctor. Wiley-Blackwell.

An edited book

Vilhjálmsson, H. H., Kopp, S., Marsella, S., & Thórisson, K. R. (Eds.). (2011). Intelligent Virtual Agents: 10th International Conference, IVA 2011, Reykjavik, Iceland, September 15-17, 2011. Proceedings (Vol. 6895). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Naheedy, J. H., & Mafee, M. F. (2008). Imaging Diagnosis of the Optic Nerve Sheath Meningioma. In B. Jeremic & S. Pitz (Eds.), Primary Optic Nerve Sheath Meningioma (pp. 39–53). 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

O`Callaghan, J. (2016, December 20). Scientists Just Released The World’s Largest Digital Sky Survey. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/scientists-just-released-the-worlds-largest-digital-sky-survey/

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. (1990). Strategic Bombers: B-2 Program Status and Current Issues (NSIAD-90-120). 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

McCarthy, B. A. (2010). Mentoring’s critical components: Four traditional teachers’, four alternate -route teachers’, and four mentors’ perspectives [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

Meyer, J. A., & Meyer, L. R. (2007, October 28). Abolish Parole. New York Times, 14CT15.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Castro Neto, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Castro Neto, 2011; Sheinin & Wang, 2012).

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

Two authors: (Sheinin & Wang, 2012)
Three authors: (Howat et al., 2007)
6 or more authors: (Lee et al., 2000)

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