How to format your references using the Journal of Software Engineering Research and Development citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Journal of Software Engineering Research and Development. 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

Brown GC (2003) Cell biology. NO says yes to mitochondria. Science 299:838–839

A journal article with 2 authors

Ward WR, Canup RM (2006) Forced resonant migration of Pluto’s outer satellites by Charon. Science 313:1107–1109

A journal article with 3 authors

Ogawa Y, Sun BK, Lee JT (2008) Intersection of the RNA interference and X-inactivation pathways. Science 320:1336–1341

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Sun Y, Zhang W, Xing Y, et al (2014) High temperature superconducting FeSe films on SrTiO3 substrates. Sci Rep 4:6040

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Machner H (2005) Einführung in die Kern- und Elementarteilchenphysik. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim, Germany

An edited book

Deising HB (ed) (2009) Plant Relationships, 2nd Edition. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Sharp AJ, Eichler EE (2006) Segmental Duplications. In: Lupski JR, Stankiewicz P (eds) Genomic Disorders: The Genomic Basis of Disease. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ, pp 73–88

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 Software Engineering Research and Development.

Blog post

Hamilton K (2017) How Science Can Make Your Baby Sleep Better. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/how-science-can-make-your-baby-sleep-better/. Accessed 30 Oct 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 (2000) Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: Progress of the Global Hawk Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Singh KK (2015) An 8-PSK receiver using LNA & SRO: Design and mathematical analysis. 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

Borden S (2012) A Photo Finish Too Close to Call, Even by Camera. New York Times A1

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Brown 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Brown 2003; Ward and Canup 2006).

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

Two authors: (Ward and Canup 2006)
Three or more authors: (Sun et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Journal of Software Engineering Research and Development
Abbreviation	J. Softw. Eng. Res. Dev.
ISSN (online)	2195-1721
Scope