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

Bayer, M. (2014). Botany. Patterning cues from the altruistic sibling. Science (New York, N.Y.), 344(6180), 158–159.

A journal article with 2 authors

Palfrey, J., & Zittrain, J. (2011). Information science. Better data for a better Internet. Science (New York, N.Y.), 334(6060), 1210–1211.

A journal article with 3 authors

Sun, Q., Haynes, K. F., & Zhou, X. (2013). Differential undertaking response of a lower termite to congeneric and conspecific corpses. Scientific reports, 3, 1650.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Campbell, D. B., Campbell, B. A., Carter, L. M., Margot, J.-L., & Stacy, N. J. S. (2006). No evidence for thick deposits of ice at the lunar south pole. Nature, 443(7113), 835–837.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Cannon, C. M. (2011). An Executive’s Guide to Fundraising Operations. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Broy, M., Krüger, I. H., & Meisinger, M. (Eds.). (2008). Model-Driven Development of Reliable Automotive Services: Second Automotive Software Workshop, ASWSD 2006, San Diego, CA, USA, March 15-17, 2006, Revised Selected Papers (Vol. 4922). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Kawano, T., Iwama, N., Ishihata, H., Shimauchi, H., & Shimomura, M. (2012). Preparation and Biomedical Application of Self-Organized Honeycomb-Patterned Polymer Films. In K. Sasaki, O. Suzuki, & N. Takahashi (Eds.), Interface Oral Health Science 2011 (pp. 22–26). Tokyo: Springer Japan.

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

Luntz, S. (2014, November 5). Mysterious Stone Circles Found In The Middle East. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/technology/can-satellites-explain-stone-circles/. 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. (1978). Establishment of a Central Focal Point for Telecommunications Matters (No. B-131935). 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

DeVito, M. A. (2015). Facebook Family Values: A News Feed Hierarchy Of Needs (Doctoral dissertation). George Washington University, Washington, DC.

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

Robles, F. (2016, June 24). Police Officers Are Haunted by Grisly Scene Inside Orlando Club. New York Times, p. A17.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bayer 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Bayer 2014; Palfrey and Zittrain 2011).

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

Two authors: (Palfrey and Zittrain 2011)
Three or more authors: (Campbell et al. 2006)

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