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

Nasmyth, K. (2002). Segregating sister genomes: the molecular biology of chromosome separation. Science (New York, N.Y.), 297(5581), 559–565.

A journal article with 2 authors

Burov, E., & Gerya, T. (2014). Asymmetric three-dimensional topography over mantle plumes. Nature, 513(7516), 85–89.

A journal article with 3 authors

Seiffert, E. R., Simons, E. L., & Attia, Y. (2003). Fossil evidence for an ancient divergence of lorises and galagos. Nature, 422(6930), 421–424.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Wang, K., Titchener, J. G., Kruk, S. S., Xu, L., Chung, H.-P., Parry, M., Kravchenko, I. I., Chen, Y.-H., Solntsev, A. S., Kivshar, Y. S., Neshev, D. N., & Sukhorukov, A. A. (2018). Quantum metasurface for multiphoton interference and state reconstruction. Science (New York, N.Y.), 361(6407), 1104–1108.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Soustelle, M. (2016). Ionic and Electrochemical Equilibria. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Gorenflo, R. (2014). Mittag-Leffler Functions, Related Topics and Applications: Theory and Applications (A. A. Kilbas, F. Mainardi, & S. V. Rogosin, Eds.). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Kashmiri, S. M., & Makinwa, K. A. A. (2013). A Digitally-Assisted Electrothermal Frequency-Locked Loop in Standard CMOS. In K. A. A. Makinwa (Ed.), Electrothermal Frequency References in Standard CMOS (pp. 87–127). Springer.

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

Fang, J. (2016, May 27). Some Humans Migrated Back To Africa 45,000 Years Ago. IFLScience; IFLScience.

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. (1995). Title 6 T&A Data (NASA) (AIMD-95-140R). 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

Survis, F. D. (2010). Residential lawn water use and lawn irrigation practices: Wellington, Florida [Doctoral dissertation]. 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

Rothenberg, B. (2017, May 22). Skipping the French Open Is a Strategy That Fits a Unique Player. New York Times, B7.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Nasmyth, 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Burov & Gerya, 2014; Nasmyth, 2002).

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

Two authors: (Burov & Gerya, 2014)
Three authors: (Seiffert et al., 2003)
6 or more authors: (Wang et al., 2018)

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