How to format your references using the Journal of Second Language Writing citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Second Language Writing. 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

Smaglik, P. (2004). Making the match. Nature, 431(7012), 1125.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gibbs, R. A., & Nelson, D. L. (2003). Human genetics. Primate shadow play. Science (New York, N.Y.), 299(5611), 1331–1333.

A journal article with 3 authors

Hu, S., Shima, T., & Hou, Z. (2014). Carbon-carbon bond cleavage and rearrangement of benzene by a trinuclear titanium hydride. Nature, 512(7515), 413–415.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Fraser, H. B., Hirsh, A. E., Steinmetz, L. M., Scharfe, C., & Feldman, M. W. (2002). Evolutionary rate in the protein interaction network. Science (New York, N.Y.), 296(5568), 750–752.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wubbolding, R. E. (2017). Reality Therapy and Self-Evaluation. American Counseling Association.

An edited book

Fischer, X. (2006). Research in Interactive Design (D. Coutellier, Ed.). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Zneika, M., Lucchese, C., Vodislav, D., & Kotzinos, D. (2016). RDF Graph Summarization Based on Approximate Patterns. In E. Grant, D. Kotzinos, D. Laurent, N. Spyratos, & Y. Tanaka (Eds.), Information Search, Integration, and Personalization: 10th International Workshop, ISIP 2015, Grand Forks, ND, USA, October 1-2, 2015, Revised Selected Papers (pp. 69–87). Springer International Publishing.

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 Second Language Writing.

Blog post

O`Callaghan, J. (2016, August 1). Study Confirms That Comets Are Remnants Of The Early Solar System. IFLScience; IFLScience.

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. (1984). SSA Data Communications Contracts With Paradyne Corporation Demonstrate the Need for Improved Management Controls (IMTEC-84-15). 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

Litt, D. (2010). Social networking sites and adolescent alcohol use: The role of social images, social norms, and social comparison [Doctoral dissertation]. George Washington 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

Kelly, D. (1994, October 16). Sex and Drugs and Mick and Keith. New York Times, 737.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Smaglik, 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Gibbs & Nelson, 2003; Smaglik, 2004).

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

Two authors: (Gibbs & Nelson, 2003)
Three or more authors: (Fraser et al., 2002)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Second Language Writing
Abbreviation	J. Second Lang. Writ.
ISSN (print)	1060-3743
Scope	Language and Linguistics Education Linguistics and Language