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

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

Gershon, Diane. 2002. “Cell Biology Gets Plugged In.” Nature 417 (6892): 6.

A journal article with 2 authors

Wyithe, J. Stuart B., and Abraham Loeb. 2004. “A Large Neutral Fraction of Cosmic Hydrogen a Billion Years after the Big Bang.” Nature 427 (6977): 815–817.

A journal article with 3 authors

Suzuki, Noriyuki, Masayoshi Nishiura, and Yasuo Wakatsuki. 2002. “Isolation and Structural Characterization of 1-Zirconacyclopent-3-Yne, Five-Membered Cyclic Alkynes.” Science (New York, N.Y.) 295 (5555): 660–663.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Marescaux, J., J. Leroy, M. Gagner, F. Rubino, D. Mutter, M. Vix, S. E. Butner, and M. K. Smith. 2001. “Transatlantic Robot-Assisted Telesurgery.” Nature 413 (6854): 379–380.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Furger, Christophe. 2016. Live Cell Assays. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Kuznetsov, Sergei O., Dominik Ślęzak, Daryl H. Hepting, and Boris G. Mirkin, eds. 2011. Rough Sets, Fuzzy Sets, Data Mining and Granular Computing: 13th International Conference, RSFDGrC 2011, Moscow, Russia, June 25-27, 2011. Proceedings. Vol. 6743. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Lu, Ning, and Zhenyu Li. 2012. “Graphene Oxide: Theoretical Perspectives.” In Quantum Simulations of Materials and Biological Systems, edited by Jun Zeng, Rui-Qin Zhang, and Herbert R. Treutlein, 69–84. 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 Papers in Education.

Blog post

Davis, Josh. 2017. “Scientists Reprogram Skin Cells To Hunt Down And Shrink Brain Tumors.” 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. 1988. The Times and Space: An Interview With Michael Collins. 137888. 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

Beyer, Patrick D. 2010. “Authentic Leadership In-Extremis: A Study of Combat Leadership.” Doctoral dissertation, Minneapolis, MN: Capella 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

Light, Andrew. 2012. “Guardian Anger.” New York Times, May 18.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Gershon 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Gershon 2002; Wyithe and Loeb 2004).

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

Two authors: (Wyithe and Loeb 2004)
Three authors: (Suzuki, Nishiura, and Wakatsuki 2002)
4 or more authors: (Marescaux et al. 2001)

About the journal

Full journal title	Research Papers in Education
Abbreviation	Res. Pap. Educ.
ISSN (print)	0267-1522
ISSN (online)	1470-1146
Scope	Education