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

Coffman, R. L. (2010). Immunology. The origin of TH2 responses. Science (New York, N.Y.), 328(5982), 1116–1117.

A journal article with 2 authors

Haldar, A., & Shenoy, V. B. (2014). Cooling a band insulator with a metal: fermionic superfluid in a dimerized holographic lattice. Scientific Reports, 4, 6655.

A journal article with 3 authors

Deng, B., Zhang, R. Q., & Shi, X. Q. (2014). New insight into the spin-conserving excitation of the negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond. Scientific Reports, 4, 5144.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Vecchi, C., Montosi, G., Zhang, K., Lamberti, I., Duncan, S. A., Kaufman, R. J., & Pietrangelo, A. (2009). ER stress controls iron metabolism through induction of hepcidin. Science (New York, N.Y.), 325(5942), 877–880.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Haupt, R. L. (2015). Timed Arrays. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Brevini, T. A. L. (2013). Gametogenesis, Early Embryo Development and Stem Cell Derivation (G. Pennarossa, Ed.). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

González-Jiménez, E., & Mullin, G. E. (2014). Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome: Etiopathogenic Analysis. In G. E. Mullin, L. J. Cheskin, & L. E. Matarese (Eds.), Integrative Weight Management: A Guide for Clinicians (pp. 47–59). 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

Andrew, E. (2014, October 24). Ferns “Talk” Via Pheromones To Decide Sex. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/ferns-communicate-pheromones-determine-sex/

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. (1994). Health, Education, Employment, and Income Security Reports (HEHS-94-117W). 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

Valenzuela, B. D. (2013). Thirty-Year-Old Mulberry Field [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

Rothenberg, B. (2016, September 6). Radwanska Upset in Straight Sets. New York Times, B12.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Coffman, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Coffman, 2010; Haldar & Shenoy, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Haldar & Shenoy, 2014)
Three authors: (Deng et al., 2014)
6 or more authors: (Vecchi et al., 2009)

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

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