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

Dickson, J. A. D. (2002). Fossil echinoderms as monitor of the Mg/Ca ratio of Phanerozoic oceans. Science (New York, N.Y.), 298(5596), 1222–1224.

A journal article with 2 authors

Camasso, N. M., & Sanford, M. S. (2015). Design, synthesis, and carbon-heteroatom coupling reactions of organometallic nickel(IV) complexes. Science (New York, N.Y.), 347(6227), 1218–1220.

A journal article with 3 authors

Johnson, K. S., Riser, S. C., & Karl, D. M. (2010). Nitrate supply from deep to near-surface waters of the North Pacific subtropical gyre. Nature, 465(7301), 1062–1065.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Pomeranz Krummel, D. A., Oubridge, C., Leung, A. K. W., Li, J., & Nagai, K. (2009). Crystal structure of human spliceosomal U1 snRNP at 5.5 A resolution. Nature, 458(7237), 475–480.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Brown, C. (2012). Mastering Elliott Wave Principle. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Lang, F., & Flammini, F. (Eds.). (2014). Formal Methods for Industrial Critical Systems: 19th International Conference, FMICS 2014, Florence, Italy, September 11-12, 2014. Proceedings (Vol. 8718). Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Carneiro, P., Heckman, J. J., & Masterov, D. V. (2005). Understanding the Sources of Ethnic and Racial Wage Gaps and Their Implications for Policy. In L. B. Nielsen & R. L. Nelson (Eds.), Handbook of Employment Discrimination Research: Rights and Realities (pp. 99–136). 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 Science Education.

Blog post

O`Callaghan, J. (2017, March 2). Climate Change Might Cost European Cities $40bn A Year By 2100. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/climate-change-might-cost-european-cities-40bn-a-year-by-2100/

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. (1985). Job Training: Effect of Under-Reported Unemployment Data on Grant Funding to Rural Areas (HRD-86-35BR). 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

Randall, R. (2009). Department of Children and Family Services workers’ knowledge of childhood obesity and services for obese children [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

Dynarski, S. (2015, January 17). The Power of a Simple Nudge. New York Times, BU6.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Dickson, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Camasso & Sanford, 2015; Dickson, 2002).

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

Two authors: (Camasso & Sanford, 2015)
Three authors: (Johnson et al., 2010)
6 or more authors: (Pomeranz Krummel et al., 2009)

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

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