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

Fröbisch, J. (2011). Paleontology. On dental occlusion and saber teeth. Science (New York, N.Y.), 331(6024), 1525–1528.

A journal article with 2 authors

Hillaire-Marcel, C., & de Vernal, A. (2008). Comment on “Mixed-layer deepening during Heinrich events: a multi-planktonic foraminiferal delta18O approach.” Science (New York, N.Y.), 320(5880), 1161; author reply 1161.

A journal article with 3 authors

Zhang, Z., Wang, W., & Qiu, B. (2014). Oceanic mass transport by mesoscale eddies. Science (New York, N.Y.), 345(6194), 322–324.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Livet, J., Weissman, T. A., Kang, H., Draft, R. W., Lu, J., Bennis, R. A., et al. (2007). Transgenic strategies for combinatorial expression of fluorescent proteins in the nervous system. Nature, 450(7166), 56–62.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Orchin, M., Macomber, R. S., Pinhas, A. R., & Wilson, R. M. (2005). The Vocabulary and Concepts of Organic Chemistry. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Blum, C. (2016). Hybrid Metaheuristics: Powerful Tools for Optimization. (G. R. Raidl, Ed.). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Lieb, K. P., Zhang, K., Müller, G. A., Gupta, R., & Schaaf, P. (2005). Heavy Ion Irradiated Ferromagnetic Films: The Cases of Cobalt and Iron. In D. R. S. Somayajulu & K.-P. Lieb (Eds.), IWNMS 2004: Proceedings of the International Workshop on Nanomaterials, Magnetic Ions and Magnetic Semiconductors Studied Mostly by Hyperfine Interactions (IWNMS 2004) held in Baroda, India, 10–14 February 2004 (pp. 39–56). 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

Andrews, R. (2016, August 30). 11 New Species Of Trapdoor Spider Have Been Found Crawling Beneath Queensland. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/11-new-species-of-trapdoor-spider-have-been-found-crawling-beneath-queensland/. 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. (1986). [Comments on Applicability of Vacancies Act to Various Labor and Education Officers] (No. B-220522.2). 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

Van Exel, L. M. (2012). Applying database refactoring techniques to procedural SQL (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, 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, April 29). Coffee, Two Eggs Over Easy And a Sketch of a Landmark. New York Times, p. 146.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Fröbisch 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Fröbisch 2011; Hillaire-Marcel and de Vernal 2008).

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

Two authors: (Hillaire-Marcel and de Vernal 2008)
Three or more authors: (Livet et al. 2007)

About the journal

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