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

Marx, V. (2013). Tracking metastasis and tricking cancer. Nature, 494(7435), 133–136.

A journal article with 2 authors

Killingsworth, M. A., & Gilbert, D. T. (2010). A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science (New York, N.Y.), 330(6006), 932.

A journal article with 3 authors

Stach, S., Benard, J., & Giurfa, M. (2004). Local-feature assembling in visual pattern recognition and generalization in honeybees. Nature, 429(6993), 758–761.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Rakitzis, T. P., Samartzis, P. C., Toomes, R. L., Kitsopoulos, T. N., Brown, A., Balint-Kurti, G. G., et al. (2003). Spin-polarized hydrogen atoms from molecular photodissociation. Science (New York, N.Y.), 300(5627), 1936–1938.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Goshtasby, A. A. (2017). Theory and Applications of Image Registration. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

An edited book

Klingebiel, S. (2016). Public Sector Performance and Development Cooperation in Rwanda: Results-Based Approaches. (V. Gonsior, F. Jakobs, & M. Nikitka, Eds.). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Adaricheva, K., & Nation, J. B. (2016). Lattices of Algebraic Subsets and Implicational Classes. In G. Grätzer & F. Wehrung (Eds.), Lattice Theory: Special Topics and Applications: Volume 2 (pp. 103–151). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

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. (2017, February 16). CRISPR Scientists Are Bringing Woolly Mammoths Back From The Dead. IFLScience. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/crispr-scientists-bringing-woolly-mammoths-back-dead/. 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. (1976). Federal Short Takeoff and Landing Transport Programs: Status and Needs (No. PSAD-76-172). 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

Robertson-Tessi, M. (2010). Mathematical models of tumor growth and therapy (Doctoral dissertation). University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.

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

Lovett, I., & Nagourney, A. (2014, May 24). Deadly Rampage in College Town After Video Rant. New York Times, p. A1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Marx 2013).
This sentence cites two references (Killingsworth and Gilbert 2010; Marx 2013).

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

Two authors: (Killingsworth and Gilbert 2010)
Three or more authors: (Rakitzis et al. 2003)

About the journal

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