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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Walther, G.-R. (2007). Ecology. Tackling ecological complexity in climate impact research. Science (New York, N.Y.), 315(5812), 606–607.

A journal article with 2 authors

Arndt, M., & Brand, C. (2015). QUANTUM MECHANICS. Interference of atomic clocks. Science (New York, N.Y.), 349(6253), 1168–1169.

A journal article with 3 authors

Siu, Z. B., Jalil, M. B. A., & Tan, S. G. (2014). Topological state transport in topological insulators under the influence of hexagonal warping and exchange coupling to in-plane magnetizations. Scientific reports, 4, 5062.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Choi, K. S., Deng, H., Laurat, J., & Kimble, H. J. (2008). Mapping photonic entanglement into and out of a quantum memory. Nature, 452(7183), 67–71.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Wolf, R. A. (2012). Atmospheric Pressure Plasma for Surface Modification. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Clay, S. M. (2013). Developing Biofuel Bioprocesses Using Systems and Synthetic Biology. (S. S. Fong, Ed.). New York, NY: Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Ferraz Dias de Moraes, M. A., & Zilberman, D. (2014). Organizational Changes Within the Public Sphere. In D. Zilberman (Ed.), Production of Ethanol from Sugarcane in Brazil: From State Intervention to a Free Market (pp. 53–58). 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 Software Quality Journal.

Blog post

Andrew, D. (2016, August 17). What’s The Best Way To Go To The Toilet – Squatting Or Sitting? IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/whats-the-best-way-to-go-to-the-toilet-squatting-or-sitting/. 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. (1976). Need To Resolve Safety Questions on Saccharin (No. HRD-76-156). 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

Waldron, K. D. (2017). The Influence of Leadership Emotional Intelligence on Employee Engagement (Doctoral dissertation). Pepperdine University, Malibu, 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

Crow, K. (2001, November 4). A New Battleground for an Old War: The Internet. New York Times, p. 1410.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Walther 2007).
This sentence cites two references (Arndt and Brand 2015; Walther 2007).

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

Two authors: (Arndt and Brand 2015)
Three or more authors: (Choi et al. 2008)

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