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 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

Lu, K. (2010). Materials science. The future of metals. Science (New York, N.Y.), 328(5976), 319–320.

A journal article with 2 authors

Peacock, T., & Bradley, E. (2008). Applied physics. Going with (or against) the flow. Science (New York, N.Y.), 320(5881), 1302–1303.

A journal article with 3 authors

Martinez-Mateo, J., Elkouss, D., & Martin, V. (2013). Key reconciliation for high performance quantum key distribution. Scientific Reports, 3, 1576.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Rasmussen, S., Chen, L., Deamer, D., Krakauer, D. C., Packard, N. H., Stadler, P. F., & Bedau, M. A. (2004). Evolution. Transitions from nonliving to living matter. Science (New York, N.Y.), 303(5660), 963–965.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Niven, P. R. (2014). Balanced Scorecard Evolution. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Vincent, J.-L. (Ed.). (2010). Intensive Care Medicine. Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Boissier, O., Hübner, J. F., & Sichman, J. S. (2007). Organization Oriented Programming: From Closed to Open Organizations. In G. M. P. O’Hare, A. Ricci, M. J. O’Grady, & O. Dikenelli (Eds.), Engineering Societies in the Agents World VII: 7th International Workshop, ESAW 2006 Dublin, Ireland, September 6-8, 2006 Revised Selected and Invited Papers (pp. 86–105). 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 Informetrics.

Blog post

Taub, B. (2016, June 27). US Government Nips All Meaningful Cannabis Research In The Bud, Say Scientists. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/us-government-nips-all-meaningful-cannabis-research-bud-say-scientists/

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. (1968). Need To Improve System for Managing Capitalized Equipment in the Bureau of Indian Affairs (B-114868). 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

Karlen, D. J. (2010). The Biocomplexity of Benthic Communities Associated with a Shallow-water Hydrothermal System in Papua New Guinea [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

Herrman, J. (2017, June 27). Counter Offensive. New York Times, MM11.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Lu, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Lu, 2010; Peacock & Bradley, 2008).

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

Two authors: (Peacock & Bradley, 2008)
Three or more authors: (Rasmussen et al., 2004)

About the journal

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