How to format your references using the Journal of Research in Science Teaching citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Research in Science Teaching. 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

Ray, T. (2010). Astronomy. Cosmic rays from cosmic birth. Science (New York, N.Y.), 330(6008), 1184–1185.

A journal article with 2 authors

Moser, A. L., & Bellan, P. M. (2012). Magnetic reconnection from a multiscale instability cascade. Nature, 482(7385), 379–381.

A journal article with 3 authors

Bierhaus, E. B., Chapman, C. R., & Merline, W. J. (2005). Secondary craters on Europa and implications for cratered surfaces. Nature, 437(7062), 1125–1127.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Li, Q., Li, Z., Li, N., Chen, X., Chen, P., Shen, X., & Lu, W. (2014). High-polarization-discriminating infrared detection using a single quantum well sandwiched in plasmonic micro-cavity. Scientific Reports, 4, 6332.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Avdeef, A. (2012). Absorption and Drug Development. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Paganetto, L. (Ed.). (2016). Stagnation Versus Growth in Europe: Capitalism in the 21st Century. Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Baruch, I. S., & Galvan-Guerra, R. (2009). Centralized Direct and Indirect Neural Control of Distributed Parameter Systems. In O. Castillo, W. Pedrycz, & J. Kacprzyk (Eds.), Evolutionary Design of Intelligent Systems in Modeling, Simulation and Control (pp. 63–81). 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 Research in Science Teaching.

Blog post

Hale, T. (2015, October 14). Robotics Firm Creates 3D-Printed Superhero Prosthetic Arms. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/disney-and-robotics-firm-create-3d-printed-superhero-prosthetic-arms/

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. (1999). Year 2000 Computing Crisis: Status of Medicare Providers Unknown (AIMD-99-243). 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

Gillaspy, K. M. (2012). Words of Samsara [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

Kolomatsky, M. (2017, August 18). Does a Building’s Age Affect the Rent? New York Times, RE2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Ray, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Moser & Bellan, 2012; Ray, 2010).

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

Two authors: (Moser & Bellan, 2012)
Three or more authors: (Li et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Research in Science Teaching
Abbreviation	J. Res. Sci. Teach.
ISSN (print)	0022-4308
ISSN (online)	1098-2736
Scope	Education