How to format your references using the Visual Informatics citation style

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

Riordan, M., 2001. The suspense of strangeness. Nature 409, 457.

A journal article with 2 authors

Kress, T.L., Guthrie, C., 2006. Molecular biology. Accurate RNA siting and splicing gets help from a DEK-hand. Science 312, 1886–1887.

A journal article with 3 authors

Ismail-Zadeh, A., Honda, S., Tsepelev, I., 2013. Linking mantle upwelling with the lithosphere descent [corrected] and the Japan Sea evolution: a hypothesis. Sci. Rep. 3, 1137.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Yoshida, Y., Kuroiwa, H., Misumi, O., Yoshida, M., Ohnuma, M., Fujiwara, T., Yagisawa, F., Hirooka, S., Imoto, Y., Matsushita, K., Kawano, S., Kuroiwa, T., 2010. Chloroplasts divide by contraction of a bundle of nanofilaments consisting of polyglucan. Science 329, 949–953.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Canham, J., Bennett, J., 2008. Mentorship in Community Nursing: Challenges and Opportunities. Blackwell Science Ltd, Oxford, UK.

An edited book

Tribastone, M., Gilmore, S. (Eds.), 2013. Computer Performance Engineering: 9th European Workshop, EPEW 2012, Munich, Germany, July 30, 2012, and 28th UK Workshop, UKPEW 2012, Edinburgh, UK, July 2, 2012, Revised Selected Papers, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

A chapter in an edited book

Chua, A.Y.K., Banerjee, S., 2015. Analyzing Users’ Trust for Online Health Rumors, in: Allen, R.B., Hunter, J., Zeng, M.L. (Eds.), Digital Libraries: Providing Quality Information: 17th International Conference on Asia-Pacific Digital Libraries, ICADL 2015, Seoul, Korea, December 9-12, 2015. Proceedings, Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 33–38.

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 Visual Informatics.

Blog post

Andrew, E., 2015. What Caused Those Spectacular Northern Lights – And How You Can Catch Them Next Time [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 2003. Telecommunications: Comprehensive Review of U.S. Spectrum Management with Broad Stakeholder Involvement Is Needed (No. GAO-03-277). U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Reitz, M.A., 2016. Nonlinear Robust Control of Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors With Applications to Hybrid Electric Vehicles (Doctoral dissertation). Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL.

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

Wyatt, E., Walsh, M.W., 2012. For Flood Victims, Another Blow Is Possible. New York Times B1.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Riordan, 2001).
This sentence cites two references (Kress and Guthrie, 2006; Riordan, 2001).

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

Two authors: (Kress and Guthrie, 2006)
Three or more authors: (Yoshida et al., 2010)

About the journal

Full journal title	Visual Informatics
ISSN (print)	2468-502X
Scope