How to format your references using the Systemic Practice and Action Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Systemic Practice and Action Research. 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

Bonetta L (2010) Protein-protein interactions: Real-time analysis. Nature 468:854

A journal article with 2 authors

Lowrance WW, Collins FS (2007) Ethics. Identifiability in genomic research. Science 317:600–602

A journal article with 3 authors

Heiling AM, Herberstein ME, Chittka L (2003) Pollinator attraction: Crab-spiders manipulate flower signals. Nature 421:334

A journal article with 5 or more authors

Yamada S, Kotake Y, Demizu Y, et al (2014) NAD-dependent isocitrate dehydrogenase as a novel target of tributyltin in human embryonic carcinoma cells. Sci Rep 4:5952

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Kuehni RG (2004) Color. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ

An edited book

De La Porte C, Heins E (eds) (2016) The Sovereign Debt Crisis, the EU and Welfare State Reform. Palgrave Macmillan UK, London

A chapter in an edited book

Klein JA, Lee FT, Hinshaw JL, et al (2013) Overview of Thermal Ablation Devices: Microwave. In: Clark T, Sabharwal T (eds) Interventional Radiology Techniques in Ablation. Springer, London, pp 21–28

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 Systemic Practice and Action Research.

Blog post

Fang J (2014) Ancient Reptilian Sea Monster Also Took To Land. In: IFLScience. Accessed 30 Oct 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) Procedures and Policies of the Energy Research and Development Administration. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Mannar NK (2017) Hri-Tech Consultants, LLC. 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

Barron J (2017) Finally, From Italy, Washington In the Buff. New York Times A18

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bonetta 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Lowrance and Collins 2007; Bonetta 2010).

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

Two authors: (Lowrance and Collins 2007)
Three or more authors: (Yamada et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal title	Systemic Practice and Action Research
Abbreviation	Syst. Pract. Action Res.
ISSN (print)	1094-429X
ISSN (online)	1573-9295
Scope	Management of Technology and Innovation Strategy and Management