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

Newman, A. V. (2011). Hidden depths. Nature, 474(7352), 441–443.

A journal article with 2 authors

Turnbull, M. M., & Landee, C. P. (2002). Solid state chemistry. Porous materials with a difference. Science (New York, N.Y.), 298(5599), 1723–1724.

A journal article with 3 authors

Berg, R. W., Alaburda, A., & Hounsgaard, J. (2007). Balanced inhibition and excitation drive spike activity in spinal half-centers. Science (New York, N.Y.), 315(5810), 390–393.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Gross, L., Mohn, F., Moll, N., Liljeroth, P., & Meyer, G. (2009). The chemical structure of a molecule resolved by atomic force microscopy. Science (New York, N.Y.), 325(5944), 1110–1114.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Bahgat, G. (2011). Energy Security. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Cowley FRS, S. W. H., Southwood, D., & Mitton, S. (Eds.). (2015). Magnetospheric Plasma Physics: The Impact of Jim Dungey’s Research (1st ed. 2015, Vol. 41). Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Álvarez, P., Hernández, S., Fabra, J., & Ezpeleta, J. (2016). Cost Estimation for the Provisioning of Computing Resources to Execute Bag-of-Tasks Applications in the Amazon Cloud. In J. Altmann, G. C. Silaghi, & O. F. Rana (Eds.), Economics of Grids, Clouds, Systems, and Services: 12th International Conference, GECON 2015, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, September 15-17, 2015, Revised Selected Papers (pp. 65–77). 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

Luntz, S. (2014, April 30). Moons May Make It Harder to Find the Signature of Life. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/moons-may-make-it-harder-find-signature-life/

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. (1982). Discontinuance of Social Security Student Benefits (No. 117523). 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

Savvas, C. (2010). Hydroclimate variability and landuse effects on nutrient export from watersheds in the mid-Atlantic United States [Doctoral dissertation]. University of North Carolina.

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

Hodara, S. (2016, January 3). A Handmade Sea of Sparkling Glass. New York Times, WE9.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Newman, 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Newman, 2011; Turnbull & Landee, 2002).

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

Two authors: (Turnbull & Landee, 2002)
Three authors: (Berg et al., 2007)
6 or more authors: (Gross et al., 2009)

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

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