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

Csontos D (2010) Exotic matter. Nature 464:175

A journal article with 2 authors

Leathers ML, Olson CR (2012) In monkeys making value-based decisions, LIP neurons encode cue salience and not action value. Science 338:132–135

A journal article with 3 authors

Son Y-W, Cohen ML, Louie SG (2006) Half-metallic graphene nanoribbons. Nature 444:347–349

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Himeno M, Kitazawa Y, Yoshida T, et al (2014) Purple top symptoms are associated with reduction of leaf cell death in phytoplasma-infected plants. Sci Rep 4:4111

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Ursone P (2015) How to Calculate Options Prices and Their Greeks. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK

An edited book

Pariante CM, Lapiz-Bluhm MD (eds) (2014) Behavioral Neurobiology of Stress-related Disorders. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

A chapter in an edited book

Welfens PJJ (2006) Information and Communications Technology, Regulations and Growth: Theory and Key Policy Issues. In: Welfens PJJ, Knipping F, Chirathivat S, Ryan C (eds) Integration in Asia and Europe: Historical Dynamics, Political Issues, and Economic Perspectives. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp 31–65

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 E (2015) Why Some People Have Trouble Telling Left From Right (And Why It’s So Important). In: IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/why-some-people-have-trouble-telling-left-right-and-why-it-s-so-important/. 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 (1990) Government Financial Vulnerability: 14 Areas Needing Special Review. 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

Darnell C (2017) Sharecropping in Higher Education: Case Study of the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University - Florida State University Joint College of Engineering. Doctoral dissertation, Indiana 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

St. John Kelly E (1997) Whose Hat? New York Times 93

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Csontos 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Csontos 2010; Leathers and Olson 2012).

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

Two authors: (Leathers and Olson 2012)
Three or more authors: (Himeno 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

Research and Writing Guides