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

Buchanan M (2009) Economics: Meltdown modelling. Nature 460:680–682

A journal article with 2 authors

Teng MWL, Smyth MJ (2014) Cancer. Can cancer trigger autoimmunity? Science 343:147–148

A journal article with 3 authors

Watanabe KN, Taeb M, Okusu H (2004) Biotechnology. Japanese controversies over transgenic crop regulation. Science 305:1572

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Ng KL, Li J-D, Cheng MY, et al (2005) Dependence of olfactory bulb neurogenesis on prokineticin 2 signaling. Science 308:1923–1927

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Le Bodic G (2005) Mobile Messaging Technologies and Services. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Bollen K, Euwema M, Munduate L (eds) (2016) Advancing Workplace Mediation Through Integration of Theory and Practice. Springer International Publishing, Cham

A chapter in an edited book

Aboul-Hosn K (2006) An Axiomatization of Arrays for Kleene Algebra with Tests. In: Schmidt RA (ed) Relations and Kleene Algebra in Computer Science: 9th International Conference on Relational Methods in Computer Science and 4th International Workshop on Applications of Kleene Algebra, RelMiCS/AKA 2006, Manchester, UK, August 29–September 2, 2006. Proceedings. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 63–77

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

Andrew D (2016) Healthcare’s Dirty Little Secret: Results From Many Clinical Trials Are Unreliable. In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/healthcares-dirty-little-secret-results-from-many-clinical-trials-are-unreliable/. 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 (2012) Trade Adjustment Assistance: Labor Awarded Community College Grants in Accordance with Requirements, but Needs to Improve Its Process. 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

Yang Y (2003) Statistical Analysis of cDNA Microarrays: A Systematic Approach to Identify MTF-1 Mediated Gene Expression Profile in Response to Cadmium. Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati

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

Oestreich JR (2016) For the Record, a Conductor Talks With an Author. New York Times C4

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Buchanan 2009).
This sentence cites two references (Buchanan 2009; Teng and Smyth 2014).

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

Two authors: (Teng and Smyth 2014)
Three or more authors: (Ng et al. 2005)

About the journal

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

Research and Writing Guides