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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for International Journal of STEM 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Vohs, K. D. (2013). Psychology. The poor’s poor mental power. Science (New York, N.Y.), 341(6149), 969–970.
A journal article with 2 authors
Huang, Z. J., & Luo, L. (2015). NEUROSCIENCE. It takes the world to understand the brain. Science (New York, N.Y.), 350(6256), 42–44.
A journal article with 3 authors
Scholl, J. A., Koh, A. L., & Dionne, J. A. (2012). Quantum plasmon resonances of individual metallic nanoparticles. Nature, 483(7390), 421–427.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Ishiba, T., Nagahara, M., Nakagawa, T., Sato, T., Ishikawa, T., Uetake, H., et al. (2014). Periostin suppression induces decorin secretion leading to reduced breast cancer cell motility and invasion. Scientific reports, 4, 7069.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Pagliaro, L. A., & Pagliaro, A. M. (2011). Handbook of Child and Adolescent Drug and Substance Abuse. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Kalmykov, Y. P. (Ed.). (2013). Recent Advances in Broadband Dielectric Spectroscopy. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.
A chapter in an edited book
Blischke, W. R., Rezaul Karim, M., & Prabhakar Murthy, D. N. (2011). Warranty Claims Data. In M. R. Karim & D. N. P. Murthy (Eds.), Warranty Data Collection and Analysis (pp. 61–77). London: 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 STEM Education.

Blog post
Andrew, E. (2014, August 29). “Shock And Kill” Approach Cures Mice Of HIV In World First. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/shock-and-kill-approach-cures-mice-hiv-world-first/. Accessed 30 October 2018

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. (1980). The Road to a Billion Dollar Saving: A Team Effort (No. 113269). Washington, DC: 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
Manzano, D. (2010). The benefits of fall intervention programs for older adults: A grant proposal (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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
Wagner, J. (2016, October 5). Once Damaged Goods, Mets Reliever Returns to the Top Shelf. New York Times, p. B10.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Vohs 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Huang and Luo 2015; Vohs 2013).

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

  • Two authors: (Huang and Luo 2015)
  • Three or more authors: (Ishiba et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleInternational Journal of STEM Education
ISSN (online)2196-7822
Scope

Other styles