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

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Research in Science 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	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

Shubik, M. (2015). RETROSPECTIVE. John Forbes Nash Jr. (1928-2015). Science (New York, N.Y.), 348(6241), 1324.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kaufman, Y. J., & Koren, I. (2006). Smoke and pollution aerosol effect on cloud cover. Science (New York, N.Y.), 313(5787), 655–658.

A journal article with 3 authors

Howes, P. D., Chandrawati, R., & Stevens, M. M. (2014). Bionanotechnology. Colloidal nanoparticles as advanced biological sensors. Science (New York, N.Y.), 346(6205), 1247390.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Koskelainen, A., Ala-Laurila, P., Fyhrquist, N., & Donner, K. (2000). Measurement of thermal contribution to photoreceptor sensitivity. Nature, 403(6766), 220–223.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Grous, A. (2012). Fracture Mechanics 3. Hoboken, NJ USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Filipe, J., Fred, A., & Sharp, B. (Eds.). (2011). Agents and Artificial Intelligence: Second International Conference, ICAART 2010, Valencia, Spain, January 22-24, 2010. Revised Selected Papers (Vol. 129). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Ater, J. L., Weinberg, J. S., Maor, M. H., & Petropoulos, D. (2005). Brain Tumors: Chemotherapy and Investigational Therapy. In K. W. Chan & R. B. Raney (Eds.), Pediatric Oncology (pp. 50–69). Boston, MA: 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 Research in Science Education.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2015, July 15). Entangled Whale’s Ordeal Ends As Scientists Free It. IFLScience. IFLScience. Accessed 30 October 2018

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. (2003). Corps of Engineers: Effects of Restrictions on Corps’ Hopper Dredges Should Be Comprehensively Analyzed (No. GAO-03-382). 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

Mazon, W. E. (2009). The effect of the Breath Builder^TM on various lung functions and musical performance abilities of clarinet players (Doctoral dissertation). University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.

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

Swarns, R. L., & Robertson, C. (2015, June 20). Black Church Is Target Again for Deadly Strike at the Heart. New York Times, p. A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Shubik 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Kaufman and Koren 2006; Shubik 2015).

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

Two authors: (Kaufman and Koren 2006)
Three or more authors: (Koskelainen et al. 2000)

About the journal

Full journal title	Research in Science Education
Abbreviation	Res. Sci. Educ.
ISSN (print)	0157-244X
ISSN (online)	1573-1898
Scope	Education