How to format your references using the MIS Quarterly citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for MIS Quarterly (MISQ). 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

ter Meulen, V. 2014. “Time to Settle the Synthetic Controversy,” Nature (509:7499), p. 135.

A journal article with 2 authors

Koch, C., and Hepp, K. 2006. “Quantum Mechanics in the Brain,” Nature (440:7084), p. 611.

A journal article with 3 authors

Castro-Camus, E., Palomar, M., and Covarrubias, A. A. 2013. “Leaf Water Dynamics of Arabidopsis Thaliana Monitored In-Vivo Using Terahertz Time-Domain Spectroscopy,” Scientific Reports (3), p. 2910.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Raghu, S., Anderson, R. C., Daehler, C. C., Davis, A. S., Wiedenmann, R. N., Simberloff, D., and Mack, R. N. 2006. “Ecology. Adding Biofuels to the Invasive Species Fire?,” Science (New York, N.Y.) (313:5794), p. 1742.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Chevallier, J., and Ielpo, F. 2013. The Economics of Commodity Markets, Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

An edited book

Bonato, A., and Janssen, J. (eds.). 2012. Algorithms and Models for the Web Graph: 9th International Workshop, WAW 2012, Halifax, NS, Canada, June 22-23, 2012. Proceedings, (Vol. 7323), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Caron, A., Rabe, U., Rödel, J., and Arnold, W. 2007. “Near-Field Acoustical Imaging Using Lateral Bending Mode of Atomic Force Microscope Cantilevers,” in Acoustical Imaging, Acoustical Imaging, M. P. André, I. Akiyama, M. Andre, Walter Arnold, J. Bamber, V. Burov, N. Chubachi, K. Erikson, H. Ermert, M. Fink, W. S. Gan, B. Granz, J. Greenleaf, J. Hu, J. P. Jones, P. Khuri-Yakub, P. Laugier, H. Lee, S. Lees, V. M. Levin, R. Maev, L. Masotti, A. Nowicki, W. O’Brien, M. Prasad, P. Rafter, D. Rouseff, J. Thijssen, B. Tittmann, P. Tortoli, A. V. der Steen, R. Waag, and P. Wells (eds.), Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 31–41.

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 MIS Quarterly.

Blog post

Davis, J. 2017. “No, This Survey Does Not Show That How Much Porn Men Watch Is Linked To Sexual Dysfunction,” IFLScience, IFLScience, May 16. (https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/no-this-survey-does-not-show-that-how-much-porn-men-watch-is-linked-to-sexual-dysfunction/, accessed October 30, 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. 1982. “Teenage Prostitution and Child Pornography,” No. 118734, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, June 24.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Zhang, G. 2010. “Roles of Serotonin 2A Receptor in a Serotonin Syndrome,” Doctoral dissertation, Doctoral dissertation, Boca Raton, FL: Florida Atlantic 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

Kelly, T. 1996. “High-Tech Fraternity,” New York Times, p. B21.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (ter Meulen 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Koch and Hepp 2006; ter Meulen 2014).

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

Two authors: (Koch and Hepp 2006)
Three or more authors: (Raghu et al. 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	MIS Quarterly
Abbreviation	MIS Q
ISSN (print)	0276-7783
Scope	Management Information Systems Computer Science Applications Information Systems Information Systems and Management