How to format your references using the The Computer Games Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Computer Games 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

Egolf, D. A. (2002). Statistical mechanics. Far from equilibrium. Science (New York, N.Y.), 296(5574), 1813–1815.

A journal article with 2 authors

Lohmann, U., & Lesins, G. (2002). Stronger constraints on the anthropogenic indirect aerosol effect. Science (New York, N.Y.), 298(5595), 1012–1015.

A journal article with 3 authors

Kohl, K. P., Jones, C. D., & Sekelsky, J. (2012). Evolution of an MCM complex in flies that promotes meiotic crossovers by blocking BLM helicase. Science (New York, N.Y.), 338(6112), 1363–1365.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Gladstone, G. R., Hurley, D. M., Retherford, K. D., Feldman, P. D., Pryor, W. R., Chaufray, J.-Y., et al. (2010). LRO-LAMP observations of the LCROSS impact plume. Science (New York, N.Y.), 330(6003), 472–476.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hamad, W. Y. (2017). Cellulose Nanocrystals. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Cohen, R. (2014). GUI Design for Android Apps. (T. Wang, Ed.). Berkeley, CA: Apress.

A chapter in an edited book

Miradi, M., Molenaar, A. A. A., & van de Ven, M. F. C. (2009). Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining Using Artificial Intelligence to Unravel Porous Asphalt Concrete in the Netherlands. In K. Gopalakrishnan, H. Ceylan, & N. O. Attoh-Okine (Eds.), Intelligent and Soft Computing in Infrastructure Systems Engineering: Recent Advances (pp. 107–176). 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 The Computer Games Journal.

Blog post

Fang, J. (2015, January 7). An X-Ray Outburst By Our Own Black Hole Shatters Existing Records. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/space/x-ray-outburst-our-own-black-hole-shatters-existing-records/. 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. (2006). Aviation Security: Enhancements Made in Passenger and Checked Baggage Screening, but Challenges Remain (No. GAO-06-371T). 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

Sheah, J. (2015). Reading Dreams: Representation of Dreams Through Artists’ Books (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

Oestreich, J. R. (2017, March 12). Move Over, Bach. Handel’s Moving In. New York Times, p. C5.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Egolf 2002).
This sentence cites two references (Egolf 2002; Lohmann and Lesins 2002).

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

Two authors: (Lohmann and Lesins 2002)
Three or more authors: (Gladstone et al. 2010)

About the journal

Full journal title	The Computer Games Journal
ISSN (online)	2052-773X
Scope