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

Calegari, F. (2014). Neurodevelopment. Tossed out to save the masses. Science (New York, N.Y.), 346(6215), 1298–1299.

A journal article with 2 authors

Gillespie, P. G., & Walker, R. G. (2001). Molecular basis of mechanosensory transduction. Nature, 413(6852), 194–202.

A journal article with 3 authors

Dotera, T., Oshiro, T., & Ziherl, P. (2014). Mosaic two-lengthscale quasicrystals. Nature, 506(7487), 208–211.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Novotny, V., Basset, Y., Miller, S. E., Weiblen, G. D., Bremer, B., Cizek, L., & Drozd, P. (2002). Low host specificity of herbivorous insects in a tropical forest. Nature, 416(6883), 841–844.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Coombs, W. T., & Holladay, S. J. (2011). Managing Corporate Social Responsibility. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

An edited book

Grunert, K. G., & Thøgersen, J. (Eds.). (2005). Consumers, Policy and the Environment A Tribute to Folke Ölander. Boston, MA: Springer US.

A chapter in an edited book

Gillai, B., & Lee, H. L. (2009). Internet-Based Distribution Channel for Product Diversion with Potential Manufacturer’s Intervention. In C. S. Tang & S. Netessine (Eds.), Consumer-Driven Demand and Operations Management Models: A Systematic Study of Information-Technology-Enabled Sales Mechanisms (pp. 115–154). Boston, MA: Springer US.

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

Taub, B. (2016, May 5). Here’s Why You Can’t Hear Your Heartbeat. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/brain/here-s-why-you-can-t-hear-your-heartbeat/. 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. (1974). Survey of Selected Computer-Based Information Systems at the Food and Drug Administration (No. 088949). 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

Nasiriamini, S. (2010). The need for adaptive network application architectures (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

Cooper, M. (2017, August 17). Carmen de Lavallade Skips Trump Reception. New York Times, p. C3.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Calegari 2014).
This sentence cites two references (Calegari 2014; Gillespie and Walker 2001).

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

Two authors: (Gillespie and Walker 2001)
Three or more authors: (Novotny et al. 2002)

About the journal

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