How to format your references using the Journal of Computers in Education citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Computers in 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Holmes, D. (2015). A disease of growth. Nature, 521(7551), S2-3.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hoffman, K. L., & McNaughton, B. L. (2002). Coordinated reactivation of distributed memory traces in primate neocortex. Science (New York, N.Y.), 297(5589), 2070–2073.

A journal article with 3 authors

Didham, R. K., Ewers, R. M., & Gemmell, N. J. (2005). Comment on “Avian extinction and mammalian introductions on oceanic islands.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 307(5714), 1412; author reply 1412.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Voiculescu, O., Bertocchini, F., Wolpert, L., Keller, R. E., & Stern, C. D. (2007). The amniote primitive streak is defined by epithelial cell intercalation before gastrulation. Nature, 449(7165), 1049–1052.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ollivier, J.-P., Torrenti, J.-M., & Carcassès, M. (2012). Physical Properties of Concrete and Concrete Constituents. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Hameurlain, A. (Ed.). (2008). Data Management in Grid and Peer-to-Peer Systems: First International Conference, Globe 2008, Turin, Italy, September 3, 2008. Proceedings (Vol. 5187). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Biermann, E., Ermel, C., & Taentzer, G. (2008). Precise Semantics of EMF Model Transformations by Graph Transformation. In K. Czarnecki, I. Ober, J.-M. Bruel, A. Uhl, & M. Völter (Eds.), Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems: 11th International Conference, MoDELS 2008, Toulouse, France, September 28 - October 3, 2008. Proceedings (pp. 53–67). Berlin, Heidelberg: 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 Journal of Computers in Education.

Blog post

Luntz, S. (2015, August 17). Even Buying Online, Choices Can Embarrass Us. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/even-buying-online-choices-can-embarrass-us/. 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. (1985). Gallaudet College and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (No. 128886). 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

Noll, R. T. (2009). Physician acceptance of Computerized Physician Order Entry in outpatient settings: A quantitative analysis of family medicine within Maricopa County, Arizona (Doctoral dissertation). Capella University, Minneapolis, MN.

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

Vecsey, G. (2011, June 9). Remembering Waitz, a Champion and Companion. New York Times, p. B13.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Holmes 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Hoffman and McNaughton 2002; Holmes 2015).

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

Two authors: (Hoffman and McNaughton 2002)
Three or more authors: (Voiculescu et al. 2007)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Computers in Education
Abbreviation	J. Comput. Educ.
ISSN (print)	2197-9987
ISSN (online)	2197-9995
Scope

Research and Writing Guides