How to format your references using the Research in Post-Compulsory Education citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Research in Post-Compulsory 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:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
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

Altman, Michael S. 2010. “Chemistry. CO Prefers the Aisle Seat.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 327 (5967): 789–790.

A journal article with 2 authors

Dennis, C., and C. Surridge. 2000. “Arabidopsis Thaliana Genome. Introduction.” Nature 408 (6814): 791.

A journal article with 3 authors

Mogilner, Alex, Jun Allard, and Roy Wollman. 2012. “Cell Polarity: Quantitative Modeling as a Tool in Cell Biology.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 336 (6078): 175–179.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Kleine, T., C. Münker, K. Mezger, and H. Palme. 2002. “Rapid Accretion and Early Core Formation on Asteroids and the Terrestrial Planets from Hf-W Chronometry.” Nature 418 (6901): 952–955.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

The American Ceramic Society. 2009. Progress in Nanotechnology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Itoi, Eiji, Guillermo Arce, Gregory I. Bain, Ronald L. Diercks, Dan Guttmann, Andreas B. Imhoff, Augustus D. Mazzocca, Hiroyuki Sugaya, and Yon-Sik Yoo, eds. 2015. Shoulder Stiffness: Current Concepts and Concerns. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

de Queiroz, Ruy J. G. B., and Anjolina G. de Oliveira. 2014. “Natural Deduction for Equality: The Missing Entity.” In Advances in Natural Deduction: A Celebration of Dag Prawitz’s Work, edited by Luiz Carlos Pereira, Edward Hermann Haeusler, and Valeria de Paiva, 63–91. Trends in Logic. Dordrecht: 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 Research in Post-Compulsory Education.

Blog post

Andrews, Robin. 2016. “Carbon Nanotubes Can Act As ‘Bridges’ Between Living Neurons.” IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/carbon-nanotubes-can-act-as-bridges-between-living-neurons/.

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. 1999. Award of Indian Health Professions Scholarships. OSI-99-3R. Washington, DC: 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

Viator, Landon. 2017. “Thanatos.” Doctoral dissertation, Lafayette, LA: University of Louisiana.

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

Walsh, Mary Williams. 2012. “Illinois Debt Takes Toll, Study Finds.” New York Times, October 25.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Altman 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Altman 2010; Dennis and Surridge 2000).

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

Two authors: (Dennis and Surridge 2000)
Three authors: (Mogilner, Allard, and Wollman 2012)
4 or more authors: (Kleine et al. 2002)

About the journal

Full journal title	Research in Post-Compulsory Education
ISSN (print)	1359-6748
ISSN (online)	1747-5112
Scope	Education

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