How to format your references using the The Library citation style

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

Chamberlain, Jeffrey S., ‘Genetics. A Genetic Intervention Stands a Skip Away from Clinical Tests’, Science (New York, N.Y.), 338.6113 (2012), pp. 1431–32

A journal article with 2 authors

Feehley, Taylor, and Cathryn R. Nagler, ‘Health: The Weighty Costs of Non-Caloric Sweeteners’, Nature, 514.7521 (2014), pp. 176–77

A journal article with 3 authors

Du, Maolin, Zaihua Wang, and Haiyan Hu, ‘Measuring Memory with the Order of Fractional Derivative’, Scientific Reports, 3 (2013), p. 3431

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Hoeflich, K. P., J. Luo, E. A. Rubie, M. S. Tsao, O. Jin, and J. R. Woodgett, ‘Requirement for Glycogen Synthase Kinase-3beta in Cell Survival and NF-KappaB Activation’, Nature, 406.6791 (2000), pp. 86–90

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Müller, Bert, and Marcel Van de Voorde, Nanoscience and Nanotechnology for Human Health (Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, 2017)

An edited book

Kotler, Philip, The Quintessence of Strategic Management: What You Really Need to Know to Survive in Business, ed. by Roland Berger and Nils Bickhoff, Quintessence Series, 2nd ed. 2016 (Springer, 2016)

A chapter in an edited book

Niazi, Muaz A., and Amir Hussain, ‘Modeling CAS’, in Cognitive Agent-Based Computing-I: A Unified Framework for Modeling Complex Adaptive Systems Using Agent-Based & Complex Network-Based Methods, ed. by Amir Hussain, SpringerBriefs in Cognitive Computation (Springer Netherlands, 2013), pp. 33–53

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 Library.

Blog post

Fang, Janet, ‘Birds Feast on Bugs Living in Sloth Fur’, IFLScience (IFLScience, 2015)

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, Intellectual Property: Improvements Needed to Better Manage Patent Office Automation and Address Workforce Challenges (U.S. Government Printing Office, 8 September 2005)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Colker, Jay O., ‘A Grounded Theory Approach to Developing a Theory of Leadership through a Case Study of ShoreBank’ (unpublished Doctoral dissertation, University of Phoenix, 2008)

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

Feeney, Kelly, ‘A Cafe That Caters’, New York Times, 18 January 2009, p. NJ9

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text

About the journal

Full journal title	The Library
Abbreviation	Library (Lond.)
ISSN (print)	0024-2160
ISSN (online)	1744-8581
Scope	Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous) Library and Information Sciences