How to format your references using the Software Quality Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Software Quality Journal. 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

Morris, P. (2013). Joseph E. Murray (1919-2012). Nature, 493(7431), 164.

A journal article with 2 authors

Pfisterer, A. B., & Schmid, B. (2002). Diversity-dependent production can decrease the stability of ecosystem functioning. Nature, 416(6876), 84–86.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ebel, C., Mariconti, L., & Gruissem, W. (2004). Plant retinoblastoma homologues control nuclear proliferation in the female gametophyte. Nature, 429(6993), 776–780.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Li, W., Kamtekar, S., Xiong, Y., Sarkis, G. J., Grindley, N. D. F., & Steitz, T. A. (2005). Structure of a synaptic gammadelta resolvase tetramer covalently linked to two cleaved DNAs. Science (New York, N.Y.), 309(5738), 1210–1215.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Singh, J. (2017). Functional Software Size Measurement Methodology with Effort Estimation and Performance Indication. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Davison, B. H., Evans, B. R., Finkelstein, M., & McMillan, J. D. (Eds.). (2005). Twenty-Sixth Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press.

A chapter in an edited book

Suhardi, I. A., & Loviscach, J. (2009). How to Steer Characters in Group Games. In Z. Pan, A. D. Cheok, W. Müller, & A. E. Rhalibi (Eds.), Transactions on Edutainment II (pp. 48–58). Berlin, Heidelberg: 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 Software Quality Journal.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2014, June 3). New Image Reveals Violent Collision of Galaxies. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/new-image-reveals-violent-collision-galaxies/. 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. (1996). Central Artery/Tunnel Project (No. RCED-96-65R). 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

Casem, J. (2009). Moku Ka Pawa: Drawn to the Light (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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

Almosawa, S., & Hubbard, B. (2016, October 8). Saudi-Led Airstrikes Blamed for Massacre of Scores of Yemeni Mourners. New York Times, p. A14.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Morris 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Morris 2013; Pfisterer and Schmid 2002).

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

Two authors: (Pfisterer and Schmid 2002)
Three or more authors: (Li et al. 2005)

About the journal

Full journal title	Software Quality Journal
Abbreviation	Softw. Qual. J.
ISSN (print)	0963-9314
ISSN (online)	1573-1367
Scope	Software Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality