How to format your references using the Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning. 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

Pain, E. (2008). Science careers. Measuring the impact of invasive plants. Science (New York, N.Y.), 320(5882), 1516.

A journal article with 2 authors

Ji, H., & Zweibel, E. (2015). Plasma physics. Understanding particle acceleration in astrophysical plasmas. Science (New York, N.Y.), 347(6225), 944–945.

A journal article with 3 authors

Nawae, W., Hannongbua, S., & Ruengjitchatchawalya, M. (2014). Defining the membrane disruption mechanism of kalata B1 via coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations. Scientific Reports, 4, 3933.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Nakamura, T., Noguchi, T., Tanaka, M., Zolensky, M. E., Kimura, M., Tsuchiyama, A., Nakato, A., Ogami, T., Ishida, H., Uesugi, M., Yada, T., Shirai, K., Fujimura, A., Okazaki, R., Sandford, S. A., Ishibashi, Y., Abe, M., Okada, T., Ueno, M., … Kawaguchi, J. (2011). Itokawa dust particles: a direct link between S-type asteroids and ordinary chondrites. Science (New York, N.Y.), 333(6046), 1113–1116.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Rasch, D., & Schott, D. (2015). Mathematische Statistik. Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

An edited book

Schulze, T., Müller, B., & Meyer, G. (Eds.). (2016). Advanced Microsystems for Automotive Applications 2016: Smart Systems for the Automobile of the Future. Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Iltanen, S. (2012). Cellular Automata in Urban Spatial Modelling. In A. J. Heppenstall, A. T. Crooks, L. M. See, & M. Batty (Eds.), Agent-Based Models of Geographical Systems (pp. 69–84). Springer Netherlands.

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 Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning.

Blog post

Hale, T. (2016, May 18). Doctors Watch The Brain Activity Of A Man As He “Sees God.” IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/doctors-watch-brain-activity-man-he-sees-god/

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. (1996). Software Capability Evaluation: VA’s Software Development Process Is Immature (AIMD-96-90). 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

Smith, G. S. (2008). The relationship between legislative implementations and educator readiness in inclusive educational environments [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Phoenix.

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. (1998, April 12). Hasidic Housing a Letdown. New York Times, 147.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Pain, 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Ji & Zweibel, 2015; Pain, 2008).

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

Two authors: (Ji & Zweibel, 2015)
Three authors: (Nawae et al., 2014)
6 or more authors: (Nakamura et al., 2011)

About the journal

Full journal title	Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning
Abbreviation	Open Learn.
ISSN (print)	0268-0513
ISSN (online)	1469-9958
Scope	Education