How to format your references using the Research in Mathematics Education citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Research in Mathematics Education. 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.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
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
Blow, N. (2008). Metabolomics: Biochemistry’s new look. Nature, 455(7213), 697–700.
A journal article with 2 authors
Melnick, J. G., & Parkin, G. (2007). Cleaving mercury-alkyl bonds: a functional model for mercury detoxification by MerB. Science (New York, N.Y.), 317(5835), 225–227.
A journal article with 3 authors
Bolmatov, D., Musaev, E. T., & Trachenko, K. (2013). Symmetry breaking gives rise to energy spectra of three states of matter. Scientific Reports, 3, 2794.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Sun, G., Ji, Q., Dilcher, D. L., Zheng, S., Nixon, K. C., & Wang, X. (2002). Archaefructaceae, a new basal angiosperm family. Science (New York, N.Y.), 296(5569), 899–904.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Petrucelli, J. R. (2013). Detecting Fraud in Organizations. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Ren, F. (2014). Communication and Popularization of Science and Technology in China (J. Zhai, Ed.). Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Ghosh, S., Joshi, A., & Tripathi, S. (2013). Empirical Evaluation of Multimodal Input Interactions. In S. Yamamoto (Ed.), Human Interface and the Management of Information. Information and Interaction Design: 15th International Conference, HCI International 2013, Las Vegas, NV, USA, July 21-26, 2013, Proceedings, Part I (pp. 37–47). 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 Research in Mathematics Education.

Blog post
Taub, B. (2016, June 20). Researchers Have Figured Out Why Thalidomide Causes Birth Defects. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/researchers-have-figured-out-why-thalidomide-causes-birth-defects/

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). Hispanic Employment Statistics (GGD-96-85R). 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
McAvoy, D. L. (2012). Coming of age with Shakespeare: The convergence of American youth culture and high culture since the 1980s [Doctoral dissertation]. Indiana 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
Stewart, J. B. (2017, February 9). Tiny School Outgains the Ivies. Here’s How. New York Times, B1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Blow, 2008).
This sentence cites two references (Blow, 2008; Melnick & Parkin, 2007).

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

  • Two authors: (Melnick & Parkin, 2007)
  • Three authors: (Bolmatov et al., 2013)
  • 6 or more authors: (Sun et al., 2002)

About the journal

Full journal titleResearch in Mathematics Education
AbbreviationRes. Math. Educ.
ISSN (print)1479-4802
ISSN (online)1754-0178
ScopeGeneral Mathematics
Education

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