How to format your references using the IT Professional citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for IT Professional. 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

[1]

H. Wajant, “The Fas signaling pathway: more than a paradigm,” Science, vol. 296, no. 5573, pp. 1635–1636, May 2002.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

B. Langlais and H. Amit, “Planetary science. The past Martian dynamo,” Science, vol. 321, no. 5897, pp. 1784–1785, Sep. 2008.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

J. Rogers Hollingsworth, K. H. Müller, and E. J. Hollingsworth, “China: The end of the science superpowers,” Nature, vol. 454, no. 7203, pp. 412–413, Jul. 2008.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

A. Hurtado et al., “Regulation of ERBB2 by oestrogen receptor-PAX2 determines response to tamoxifen,” Nature, vol. 456, no. 7222, pp. 663–666, Dec. 2008.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

V. G. Nasr and J. A. DiNardo, The Pediatric Cardiac Anesthesia Handbook. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2017.

An edited book

[1]

K. Li, X. Li, S. Ma, and G. W. Irwin, Eds., Life System Modeling and Intelligent Computing: International Conference on Life System Modeling and Simulation, LSMS 2010, and International Conference on Intelligent Computing for Sustainable Energy and Environment, ICSEE 2010, Wuxi, China, September 17-20, 2010. Proceedings, Part I, vol. 97. in Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol. 97. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2010.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

Z. Yang and J. Chen, “Housing Affordability in Urban China: Regional Study,” in Housing Affordability and Housing Policy in Urban China, J. Chen, Ed., in SpringerBriefs in Economics. , Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2014, pp. 73–86.

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 IT Professional.

Blog post

[1]

B. Taub, “New Treatment ‘Reverses’ Alzheimer’s Disease,” IFLScience.

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

[1]

Government Accountability Office, “DOD Education Benefits: Action Is Needed to Ensure Evaluations of Postsecondary Schools Are Useful,” U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, GAO-14-855, Sep. 2014.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

F. Annan, “Spatial pattern of yield distributions: implications for crop insurance,” Doctoral dissertation, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS, 2012.

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

[1]

J. Schwartz, “Exxon’s Forecasts, Not Past Views, Are at Core of Climate Investigation,” New York Times, p. B1, Aug. 19, 2016.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1], [2].
This sentence cites four references [1]–[4].

About the journal

Full journal title	IT Professional
Abbreviation	IT Prof.
ISSN (print)	1520-9202
Scope	Computer Science Applications Hardware and Architecture Software