How to format your references using the Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A. 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.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
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
[1]
G. Amelino-Camelia, A phenomenological description of space-time noise in quantum gravity, Nature 410 (2001) 1065–1067.
A journal article with 2 authors
[1]
C.J. Pickard, R.J. Needs, High-pressure physics: Piling on the pressure, Nature 511 (2014) 294–295.
A journal article with 3 authors
[1]
F.-Z. Teng, N. Dauphas, R.T. Helz, Iron isotope fractionation during magmatic differentiation in Kilauea Iki lava lake, Science 320 (2008) 1620–1622.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
[1]
D.J. Steger, E.S. Haswell, A.L. Miller, S.R. Wente, E.K. O’Shea, Regulation of chromatin remodeling by inositol polyphosphates, Science 299 (2003) 114–116.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
[1]
D. Minoli, Nanotechnology Applications to Telecommunications and Networking, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2005.
An edited book
[1]
M. Lumpe, W. Vanderperren, eds., Software Composition: 6th International Symposium, SC 2007, Braga, Portugal, March 24-25, 2007, Revised Selected Papers, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2007.
A chapter in an edited book
[1]
C. Monaghan, Changing the Prism, in: Z. Gross, L. Davies (Eds.), The Contested Role of Education in Conflict and Fragility, SensePublishers, Rotterdam, 2015: pp. 63–81.

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 Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A.

Blog post
[1]
A. Carpineti, An Ancient Peruvian Mystery Has Been Solved From Space, IFLScience (2016). https://www.iflscience.com/environment/nazca-mystery-has-been-solved-space/ (accessed October 30, 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
[1]
Government Accountability Office, Review of Selected Projects Under the Bilingual Education Program, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1973.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
[1]
J.Y. Theis, Accessing mental health services among Asian American adults: Evidence from the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, 2013.

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]
B. Mueller, A.L. Baker, Heroin Market Shapes Enforcer’s Rise and Fall, New York Times (2016) A1.

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 titleJournal of Combinatorial Theory, Series A
AbbreviationJ. Comb. Theory Ser. A.
ISSN (print)0097-3165
ScopeComputational Theory and Mathematics
Discrete Mathematics and Combinatorics
Theoretical Computer Science

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