How to format your references using the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. 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

Gatenby, Robert A. 2009. “A Change of Strategy in the War on Cancer.” Nature 459 (7246): 508–509.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ignés-Mullol, J., and D. K. Schwartz. 2001. “Shear-Induced Molecular Precession in a Hexatic Langmuir Monolayer.” Nature 410 (6826): 348–351.

A journal article with 3 authors

Verhagen, Josanne H., Sander Herfst, and Ron A. M. Fouchier. 2015. “Infectious Disease. How a Virus Travels the World.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 347 (6222): 616–617.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Youn, Duck Hyun, Ji-Wook Jang, Jae Young Kim, Jum Suk Jang, Sun Hee Choi, and Jae Sung Lee. 2014. “Fabrication of Graphene-Based Electrode in Less than a Minute through Hybrid Microwave Annealing.” Scientific Reports 4 (June): 5492.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Grinshpan, Leonid. 2012. Solving Enterprise Applications Performance Puzzles. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Kim-Prieto, Chu, ed. 2014. Religion and Spirituality Across Cultures. Vol. 9. Cross-Cultural Advancements in Positive Psychology. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Köppel, H. 2007. “Nonadiabatic Multimode Dynamics at Symmetry-Allowed Conical Intersections.” In Quantum Dynamics of Complex Molecular Systems, edited by David A. Micha and Irene Burghardt, 113–133. Springer Series in Chemical Physics. 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 Graphic Novels and Comics.

Blog post

Taub, Ben. 2016. “Snails Can Make Decisions Using Just Two Brain Cells.” IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/snails-make-decisions-two-brain-cells/.

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. 2006. Space Acquisitions: DOD Needs to Take More Action to Address Unrealistic Initial Cost Estimates of Space Systems. GAO-07-96. 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

Baxter, Jenny M. 2010. “Enantioselective Mannich-Type Reactions Promoted by Strained Silane Lewis Acids: Selective Generation of Two Contiguous Stereocenters and Entry into a Novel Class of Pyrrolidines.” Doctoral dissertation, New York, NY: Columbia University.

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

Cook, Linda, and Patricia R. Olsen. 2009. “It Started at the Gas Pump.” New York Times, May 24.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Gatenby 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Gatenby 2009; Ignés-Mullol and Schwartz 2001).

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

Two authors: (Ignés-Mullol and Schwartz 2001)
Three authors: (Verhagen, Herfst, and Fouchier 2015)
4 or more authors: (Youn et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics
ISSN (print)	2150-4857
ISSN (online)	2150-4865
Scope	Literature and Literary Theory Visual Arts and Performing Arts