How to format your references using the Journal of Informetrics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Informetrics. 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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Barkana, R. (2006). The first stars in the universe and cosmic reionization. Science (New York, N.Y.), 313(5789), 931–934.

A journal article with 2 authors

Bannerman, D. M., & Sprengel, R. (2007). Neuroscience. Remembering the subtle differences. Science (New York, N.Y.), 317(5834), 50–51.

A journal article with 3 authors

Liu, W. W., Mazor, O., & Wilson, R. I. (2015). Thermosensory processing in the Drosophila brain. Nature, 519(7543), 353–357.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Li, Y., Liang, B., Gu, Z.-M., Zou, X.-Y., & Cheng, J.-C. (2013). Reflected wavefront manipulation based on ultrathin planar acoustic metasurfaces. Scientific Reports, 3, 2546.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Happer, W., Jau, Y.-Y., & Walker, T. (2010). Optically Pumped Atoms. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Kristbergsson, K., & Ötles, S. (Eds.). (2016). Functional Properties of Traditional Foods (Vol. 12). Springer US.

A chapter in an edited book

Huang, Z., Li, Q., & Ding, H. (2013). Mobility Analysis Part-2. In Q. Li & H. Ding (Eds.), Theory of Parallel Mechanisms (pp. 71–133). Springer Netherlands.

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 Informetrics.

Blog post

Davis, J. (2016, July 22). Scientists Claim To Have Reversed Menopause. IFLScience. 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

Government Accountability Office. (1997). Multiple Launch Rocket System: Range Less Than Needed and Sustained Rocket Production Not Ensured (NSIAD-97-196R). 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

Simmons, C. (2008). Correlates and predictors of cognitive complexity among counseling and social work students in graduate training programs [Doctoral dissertation]. University of South Florida.

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

Leland, J. (2016, November 24). ‘I Don’t Look Back.’ New York Times, MB1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Barkana, 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Bannerman & Sprengel, 2007; Barkana, 2006).

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

Two authors: (Bannerman & Sprengel, 2007)
Three or more authors: (Li et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Informetrics
Abbreviation	J. Informetr.
ISSN (print)	1751-1577
Scope	Computer Science Applications Library and Information Sciences