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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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 titleJournal of Informetrics
AbbreviationJ. Informetr.
ISSN (print)1751-1577
ScopeComputer Science Applications
Library and Information Sciences

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