How to format your references using the Studies in Science Education citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Studies in Science 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	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

Dyson, F. (2005). The death of a star. Nature, 438(7071), 1086.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hudson, K. L., & Collins, F. S. (2013). Biospecimen policy: Family matters. Nature, 500(7461), 141–142.

A journal article with 3 authors

Core, L. J., Waterfall, J. J., & Lis, J. T. (2008). Nascent RNA sequencing reveals widespread pausing and divergent initiation at human promoters. Science (New York, N.Y.), 322(5909), 1845–1848.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Bachnoff, N., Cohen-Kutner, M., Trus, M., & Atlas, D. (2013). Intra-membrane signaling between the voltage-gated Ca2+-channel and cysteine residues of syntaxin 1A coordinates synchronous release. Scientific Reports, 3, 1620.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Eylert, B. (2006). The Mobile Multimedia Business. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Inamuddin, & Luqman, M. (Eds.). (2012). Ion Exchange Technology I: Theory and Materials. Springer Netherlands.

A chapter in an edited book

Tazreiter, C., Weber, L., Pickering, S., Segrave, M., & McKernan, H. (2016). Samoan-Born New Zealanders as Trans-Tasman Denizens. In L. Weber, S. Pickering, M. Segrave, & H. McKernan (Eds.), Fluid Security in the Asia Pacific: Transnational Lives, Human Rights and State Control (pp. 77–102). Palgrave Macmillan UK.

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 Studies in Science Education.

Blog post

Andrew, E. (2014, March 7). Otter Vs. Alligator Yields Surprising Victor. 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. (1986). Federal Funding Mechanisms in Support of University Research (No. 129326). 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

Taaz, Z. (2017). Boiler automation and monitoring of temperature and steam flow using Simulink [Doctoral dissertation]. California State University, Long Beach.

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

Schwartz, J. (2016, September 28). Counting Green: How to Measure Your Carbon Tire Print. New York Times, D2.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Dyson, 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Dyson, 2005; Hudson & Collins, 2013).

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

Two authors: (Hudson & Collins, 2013)
Three authors: (Core et al., 2008)
6 or more authors: (Bachnoff et al., 2013)

About the journal

Full journal title	Studies in Science Education
Abbreviation	Stud. Sci. Educ.
ISSN (print)	0305-7267
ISSN (online)	1940-8412
Scope	Education

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