How to format your references using the Journal of Open Research Software citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Open Research Software (JORS). 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Weinberg, R 2010 Point: Hypotheses first. Nature, 464(7289): 678.

A journal article with 2 authors

Zeller, D and Booth, S 2005 Costs and benefits of regulating mercury. Science (New York, N.Y.), 310(5749): 777–9; author reply 777-9.

A journal article with 3 authors

Gerstein, M, Lan, N, and Jansen, R 2002 Proteomics. Integrating interactomes. Science (New York, N.Y.), 295(5553): 284–287.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Okamoto, H, Eguchi, R, Hamao, S, Goto, H, Gotoh, K, Sakai, Y, Izumi, M, Takaguchi, Y, Gohda, S, and Kubozono, Y 2014 An extended phenacene-type molecule, [8]phenacene: synthesis and transistor application. Scientific reports, 4: 5330.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Marti, P 2013 Theory of Structures. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Almeida, R M S F 2015 School Buildings Rehabilitation: Indoor Environmental Quality and Enclosure Optimization. Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Shevah, O and Laron, Z 2011 Genetic Aspects. In: Laron Syndrome - From Man to Mouse: Lessons from Clinical and Experimental Experience. 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 Open Research Software.

Blog post

Andrew, E 2014 Scientists Develop Technique To Produce Self-Assembling Anticancer Molecules In Minutes. URL https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/scientists-develop-technique-produce-self-assembling-anticancer-molecules/. [Online; accessed 30-October-2018]

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 2001 Research and Development Funding: Reported Gap Between Data From Federal Agencies and Their R&D Performers Results From Noncomparable Data.

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Guzman, B P 2015 Understanding the factors affecting local emergency service collaboration.

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

Gordon, M R and Schmitt, E 2017 U.S. Sends Civilians to Stabilize Recaptured Syrian Areas.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1, 2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Open Research Software
ISSN (online)	2049-9647
Scope