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

Stone, M. (2015). OPTICS. Topology, spin, and light. Science (New York, N.Y.), 348(6242), 1432–1433.

A journal article with 2 authors

Snook, R. R., & Hosken, D. J. (2004). Sperm death and dumping in Drosophila. Nature, 428(6986), 939–941.

A journal article with 3 authors

Howell, K., White, J. G., & Hobert, O. (2015). Spatiotemporal control of a novel synaptic organizer molecule. Nature, 523(7558), 83–87.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Jovanovic, K., Gonsalves, D., Da Costa Dias, B., Moodley, K., Reusch, U., Knackmuss, S., Penny, C., Weinberg, M. S., Little, M., & Weiss, S. F. T. (2013). Anti-LRP/LR specific antibodies and shRNAs impede amyloid beta shedding in Alzheimer’s disease. Scientific Reports, 3, 2699.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Shapiro, I. M. (2016). Energy Audits and Improvements for Commercial Buildings. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Gleich, D. F., Komjáthy, J., & Litvak, N. (Eds.). (2015). Algorithms and Models for the Web Graph: 12th International Workshop, WAW 2015, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, December 10-11, 2015, Proceedings (1st ed. 2015, Vol. 9479). Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Gruba, P., Cárdenas-Claros, M. S., Suvorov, R., & Rick, K. (2016). Macro-Level Evaluation. In M. S. Cárdenas-Claros, R. Suvorov, & K. Rick (Eds.), Blended Language Program Evaluation (pp. 85–104). Palgrave Macmillan UK.

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

Hamilton, K. (2016, December 5). Eyes In The sky: Cutting NASA Earth Observations Would Be A Costly Mistake. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/eyes-in-the-sky-cutting-nasa-earth-observations-would-be-a-costly-mistake/

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. (2009). Emergency Communications: National Communications System Provides Programs for Priority Calling, but Planning for New Initiatives and Performance Measurement Could be Strengthened (GAO-09-822). 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

Swann, E. (2014). Adult learning for healthy aging: An investigation of health literacy and technology use in older adults [Doctoral dissertation]. Florida Atlantic 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

Gustines, G. G. (2012, November 9). In Comics World, Needy Have Heroes Of Their Own. New York Times, F12.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Stone, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Snook & Hosken, 2004; Stone, 2015).

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

Two authors: (Snook & Hosken, 2004)
Three authors: (Howell et al., 2015)
6 or more authors: (Jovanovic 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

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