How to format your references using the Reflective Practice citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Reflective Practice. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteDownload the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Stern, P. (2010). Glia. Glee for glia. Introduction. Science (New York, N.Y.), 330(6005), 773.
A journal article with 2 authors
Velicogna, I., & Wahr, J. (2006). Measurements of time-variable gravity show mass loss in Antarctica. Science (New York, N.Y.), 311(5768), 1754–1756.
A journal article with 3 authors
Olff, H., Ritchie, M. E., & Prins, H. H. T. (2002). Global environmental controls of diversity in large herbivores. Nature, 415(6874), 901–904.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Krekelberg, B., Dannenberg, S., Hoffmann, K.-P., Bremmer, F., & Ross, J. (2003). Neural correlates of implied motion. Nature, 424(6949), 674–677.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Pai MD FACC FRCP Edin, R. G., & Varadarajan MD FACC, P. (2014). Echocardiography Board Review. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An edited book
Noormets, A. (Ed.). (2009). Phenology of Ecosystem Processes: Applications in Global Change Research. Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Vila, C., Estruch, A., Siller, H. R., Abellán, J. V., & Romero, F. (2007). Workflow Methodology for Collaborative Design and Manufacturing. In Y. Luo (Ed.), Cooperative Design, Visualization, and Engineering: 4th International Conference, CDVE 2007, Shanghai, China, September 16-20, 2007. Proceedings (pp. 42–49). 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 Reflective Practice.

Blog post
Fang, J. (2014, October 15). Microbial Life Discovered Inside Deep-Sea Rocks. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/environment/methane-breathing-microbes-discovered-within-deep-sea-rocky-mounds/

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. (2000). Aviation Security: Vulnerabilities Still Exist in the Aviation Security System (T-RCED/AIMD-00-142). 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
Howard, G. M. (2012). Roles of vitamin D and calcium in cancer and diet history [Doctoral dissertation]. Mississippi State 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
Goldstein, J. (2014, July 23). Police Study Use of Force; May Issue More Tasers. New York Times, A18.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Stern, 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Stern, 2010; Velicogna & Wahr, 2006).

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

  • Two authors: (Velicogna & Wahr, 2006)
  • Three authors: (Olff et al., 2002)
  • 6 or more authors: (Krekelberg et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal titleReflective Practice
ISSN (print)1462-3943
ISSN (online)1470-1103
ScopePhilosophy

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