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

Telesco, C. (2006). Astronomy. Born with flare. Science (New York, N.Y.), 314(5799), 605–606.

A journal article with 2 authors

Liu, H., & Lalanne, P. (2008). Microscopic theory of the extraordinary optical transmission. Nature, 452(7188), 728–731.

A journal article with 3 authors

Dalli, J., Colas, R. A., & Serhan, C. N. (2013). Novel n-3 immunoresolvents: structures and actions. Scientific Reports, 3, 1940.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Schofield, L., Hewitt, M. C., Evans, K., Siomos, M.-A., & Seeberger, P. H. (2002). Synthetic GPI as a candidate anti-toxic vaccine in a model of malaria. Nature, 418(6899), 785–789.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Reinhardt, H.-W. (2010). Ingenieurbaustoffe. Ernst & Sohn Verlag für Architektur und technische Wissenschaften GmbH & Co. KG.

An edited book

Chetouani, M., Hussain, A., Gas, B., Milgram, M., & Zarader, J.-L. (Eds.). (2007). Advances in Nonlinear Speech Processing: International Conference on Non-Linear Speech Processing, NOLISP 2007 Paris, France, May 22-25, 2007 Revised Selected Papers (Vol. 4885). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Gkoulalas-Divanis, A., & Verykios, V. S. (2010). Summary. In V. S. Verykios (Ed.), Association Rule Hiding for Data Mining (pp. 25–25). Springer US.

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

Luntz, S. (2016, June 28). Koala Sperm Lasts In The Fridge, Not The Freezer. 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. (1980). Computerized Hospital Medical Information Systems Need Further Evaluation To Ensure Benefits From Huge Investments (AFMD-81-3). 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

McElhoes, J. L. (2017). Spatial, Technological, and Functional Variability Among the Prehistoric Ceramics of the Southern California Coast [Doctoral dissertation]. California State University, Long Beach.

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

MacFARQUHAR, N. (2017, July 10). Closed Before It Opens. New York Times, C1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Telesco, 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Liu & Lalanne, 2008; Telesco, 2006).

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

Two authors: (Liu & Lalanne, 2008)
Three authors: (Dalli et al., 2013)
6 or more authors: (Schofield et al., 2002)

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