How to format your references using the Scientometrics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Scientometrics. 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
Robbins, M. (2011). Policy: Fuelling politics. Nature, 474(7352), S22-4.
A journal article with 2 authors
Bakker, H. J., & Nienhuys, H.-K. (2002). Delocalization of protons in liquid water. Science (New York, N.Y.), 297(5581), 587–590.
A journal article with 3 authors
Kalisz, S., Vogler, D. W., & Hanley, K. M. (2004). Context-dependent autonomous self-fertilization yields reproductive assurance and mixed mating. Nature, 430(7002), 884–887.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Voyles, P. M., Muller, D. A., Grazul, J. L., Citrin, P. H., & Gossmann, H.-J. L. (2002). Atomic-scale imaging of individual dopant atoms and clusters in highly n-type bulk Si. Nature, 416(6883), 826–829.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Ruckmongathan, T. N. (2014). Addressing Techniques of Liquid Crystal Displays. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
An edited book
Skiba, R. J., Mediratta, K., & Rausch, M. K. (Eds.). (2016). Inequality in School Discipline: Research and Practice to Reduce Disparities. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan US.
A chapter in an edited book
Bahadori, M. N., Dehghani-sanij, A., & Sayigh, A. (2014). An Analytical–Numerical Study of the Performance of New Designs of Wind Towers. In A. Dehghani-sanij & A. Sayigh (Eds.), Wind Towers: Architecture, Climate and Sustainability (pp. 119–147). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

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 Scientometrics.

Blog post
Andrew, D. (2016, November 23). Is Fukushima Still Safe After The Latest Earthquake? 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. (2013). Information Technology: DHS Needs to Enhance Management of Major Investments (No. GAO-13-478T). 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
Kalinec-Craig, C. (2012). A case study of four Latina/o pre-service teachers in learning to teach mathematics for understanding and integrate a child’s out-of-school mathematical knowledge and experiences (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
Gorman, J. (2016, November 21). Figaro, the Toolmaking Cockatoo. New York Times, p. D3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Robbins 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Bakker and Nienhuys 2002; Robbins 2011).

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

  • Two authors: (Bakker and Nienhuys 2002)
  • Three or more authors: (Voyles et al. 2002)

About the journal

Full journal titleScientometrics
AbbreviationScientometrics
ISSN (print)0138-9130
ISSN (online)1588-2861
ScopeComputer Science Applications
General Social Sciences
Library and Information Sciences

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