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

Kulmala, M. (2015). Atmospheric chemistry: China’s choking cocktail. Nature, 526(7574), 497–499.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hågvar, S., & Ohlson, M. (2013). Ancient carbon from a melting glacier gives high ¹⁴C age in living pioneer invertebrates. Scientific Reports, 3, 2820.

A journal article with 3 authors

Alford, R. A., Dixon, P. M., & Pechmann, J. H. (2001). Ecology. Global amphibian population declines. Nature, 412(6846), 499–500.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Heine, M., Groc, L., Frischknecht, R., Béïque, J.-C., Lounis, B., Rumbaugh, G., Huganir, R. L., Cognet, L., & Choquet, D. (2008). Surface mobility of postsynaptic AMPARs tunes synaptic transmission. Science (New York, N.Y.), 320(5873), 201–205.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ehrlich, E., & Fanelli, D. (2012). The Financial Services Marketing Handbook. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Lee, R., & Ishii, N. (Eds.). (2009). Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking and Parallel/Distributed Computing (Vol. 209). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Evans, K. F., & Marshak, A. (2005). Numerical Methods. In A. Marshak & A. Davis (Eds.), 3D Radiative Transfer in Cloudy Atmospheres (pp. 243–281). 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

Andrew, E. (2015, June 10). Watch A Katana-Wielding Robot Battle A Human Samurai Sword Master. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/watch-katana-wielding-robot-battle-human-samurai-sword-master/

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. (2014). Media Ownership: FCC Should Review the Effects of Broadcaster Agreements on Its Media Policy Goals (GAO-14-558). 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

Desai, S. S. (2013). CFD simuation of flow past a rotating circular cylinder with an end plate [Doctoral dissertation]. California State University, Long Beach.

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, September 9). Open Skies, Bouncing Balls and Tough Critiques. New York Times, B14.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Kulmala, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Hågvar & Ohlson, 2013; Kulmala, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Hågvar & Ohlson, 2013)
Three authors: (Alford et al., 2001)
6 or more authors: (Heine et al., 2008)

About the journal

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

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