How to format your references using the Library and Information Science Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Library and Information Science Research. 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

Street, R. A. (2013). Materials science. Unraveling charge transport in conjugated polymers. Science (New York, N.Y.), 341(6150), 1072–1073.

A journal article with 2 authors

Butler, D., & Pockley, P. (2000). Monsanto makes rice genome public. Nature, 404(6778), 534.

A journal article with 3 authors

Gore, J., Youk, H., & van Oudenaarden, A. (2009). Snowdrift game dynamics and facultative cheating in yeast. Nature, 459(7244), 253–256.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Wu, J., Xia, J., Lei, W., & Wang, B.-P. (2013). Advanced understanding of stickiness on superhydrophobic surfaces. Scientific Reports, 3, 3268.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

De Vos, A. (2010). Reversible Computing. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Trendowicz, A. (2014). Software Project Effort Estimation: Foundations and Best Practice Guidelines for Success (R. Jeffery, Ed.). Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Rangiha, M. E., Comuzzi, M., & Karakostas, B. (2015). Role and Task Recommendation and Social Tagging to Enable Social Business Process Management. In K. Gaaloul, R. Schmidt, S. Nurcan, S. Guerreiro, & Q. Ma (Eds.), Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling: 16th International Conference, BPMDS 2015, 20th International Conference, EMMSAD 2015, Held at CAiSE 2015, Stockholm, Sweden, June 8-9, 2015, Proceedings (pp. 68–82). 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 Library and Information Science Research.

Blog post

Davis, J. (2016, May 9). Ancient Cemetery Found Just A Stone’s Throw From Stonehenge. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/editors-blog/anglo-saxon-burial-grounds-found-just-stones-throw-stonehenge/

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. (1993). U.S. Trade and Development Agency: Limitations Exist in Its Ability to Help Generate U.S. Exports (GGD-94-9). 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

Lake, A. D. (2013). Hepatic stress response mechanisms in progressive human nonalcoholic fatty liver disease [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Arizona.

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

Greenhouse, L. (2007, April 19). IN REVERSAL OF COURSE, JUSTICES, 5-4, BACK BAN ON ABORTION METHOD. 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 (Street, 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Butler & Pockley, 2000; Street, 2013).

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

Two authors: (Butler & Pockley, 2000)
Three authors: (Gore et al., 2009)
6 or more authors: (Wu et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Library and Information Science Research
Abbreviation	Libr. Inf. Sci. Res.
ISSN (print)	0740-8188
Scope	Information Systems Library and Information Sciences