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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Deisseroth, K. (2014). Circuit dynamics of adaptive and maladaptive behaviour. Nature, 505(7483), 309–317.

A journal article with 2 authors

De La Cruz, E. M., & Pollard, T. D. (2001). Structural biology. Actin’ up. Science (New York, N.Y.), 293(5530), 616–618.

A journal article with 3 authors

Gibbs, M. J., Armstrong, J. S., & Gibbs, A. J. (2001). Recombination in the hemagglutinin gene of the 1918 “Spanish flu.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 293(5536), 1842–1845.

A journal article with 21 or more authors

Sigal, A., Milo, R., Cohen, A., Geva-Zatorsky, N., Klein, Y., Liron, Y., Rosenfeld, N., Danon, T., Perzov, N., & Alon, U. (2006). Variability and memory of protein levels in human cells. Nature, 444(7119), 643–646.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hochstadt, H. (1988). Integral Equations. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Gairing, M., & Savani, R. (Eds.). (2016). Algorithmic Game Theory: 9th International Symposium, SAGT 2016, Liverpool, UK, September 19–21, 2016, Proceedings (Vol. 9928). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Heyneman, S. P., & Lee, J. (2013). World-Class Universities: The Sector Requirements. In J. C. Shin & B. M. Kehm (Eds.), Institutionalization of World-Class University in Global Competition (pp. 45–58). 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

Taub, B. (2016, August 24). Here’s How LSD Messes With Your Ability To Use Language. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/heres-how-lsd-messes-with-your-ability-to-use-language/

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. (2015). Geospatial Data: Progress Needed on Identifying Expenditures, Building and Utilizing a Data Infrastructure, and Reducing Duplicative Efforts [Reissued March 18, 2015] (GAO-15-193). 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

Warfield, B. S. (2017). Speaking of the Self: Theorizing the Dialogical Dimensions of Ethical Agency [Doctoral dissertation]. University of South Florida.

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

Crow, K. (2002, April 14). Meters Are Running, And Hawking, Too. New York Times, 146.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Deisseroth, 2014).
This sentence cites two references (De La Cruz & Pollard, 2001; Deisseroth, 2014).

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

Two authors: (De La Cruz & Pollard, 2001)
Three or more authors: (Sigal et al., 2006)

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