How to format your references using the Theory and Decision citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Theory and Decision. 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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Janson, S. (2011). Computer science. Networking--smoothly does it. Science (New York, N.Y.), 333(6040), 298–299.
A journal article with 2 authors
Brainard, M. S., & Doupe, A. J. (2000). Interruption of a basal ganglia-forebrain circuit prevents plasticity of learned vocalizations. Nature, 404(6779), 762–766.
A journal article with 3 authors
Yu, X., Jin, L., & Zhou, Z. H. (2008). 3.88 A structure of cytoplasmic polyhedrosis virus by cryo-electron microscopy. Nature, 453(7193), 415–419.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Choi, S. H., Boo, S. J., Lee, J.-H., & Kang, Y. C. (2014). Electrochemical properties of tungsten sulfide-carbon composite microspheres prepared by spray pyrolysis. Scientific reports, 4, 5755.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Sinzinger, S., & Jahns, J. (2005). Microoptics. Weinheim, FRG: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.
An edited book
Coulton, R. (2016). Stealing Books in Eighteenth-Century London. (M. Mauger & C. Reid, Eds.). London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.
A chapter in an edited book
Guedes, E. B., de Assis, F. M., & Medeiros, R. A. C. (2016). Classical Zero-Error Information Theory. In F. M. de Assis & R. A. C. Medeiros (Eds.), Quantum Zero-Error Information Theory (pp. 65–78). 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 Theory and Decision.

Blog post
Andrew, E. (2015, June 30). Sugary Drinks may Contribute to Almost 200,000 Deaths Worldwide each Year. IFLScience. IFLScience. 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. (2007). Information Technology: FBI Following a Number of Key Acquisition Practices on New Case Management System but Improvements Still Needed (No. GAO-07-912). 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
Burke, K. (2012). Big Five personality traits and astrology: The relationship between the Moon variable and the NEO PI-R (Doctoral dissertation). Pacifica Graduate Institute, Carpinteria, 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
Wagner, J. (2016, October 26). Wait Over, Indians Strike Quickly. New York Times, p. B8.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Janson 2011).
This sentence cites two references (Brainard and Doupe 2000; Janson 2011).

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

  • Two authors: (Brainard and Doupe 2000)
  • Three or more authors: (Choi et al. 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleTheory and Decision
AbbreviationTheory Decis.
ISSN (print)0040-5833
ISSN (online)1573-7187
ScopeArts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
Computer Science Applications
General Decision Sciences
General Economics, Econometrics and Finance
Applied Psychology
Developmental and Educational Psychology
General Social Sciences

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