How to format your references using the Web Semantics: Science, Services and Agents on the World Wide Web citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Web Semantics: Science, Services and Agents on the World Wide Web. 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
[1]
K.S. Lackner, Climate change. A guide to CO2 sequestration, Science 300 (2003) 1677–1678.
A journal article with 2 authors
[1]
A. Abbott, Q. Schiermeier, Deep roots of Nazi science revealed, Nature 407 (2000) 823–824.
A journal article with 3 authors
[1]
C.M. Chan, C. Zhou, R.H. Huang, Reconstituting bacterial RNA repair and modification in vitro, Science 326 (2009) 247.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
[1]
A. Efeyan, I. Garcia-Cao, D. Herranz, S. Velasco-Miguel, M. Serrano, Tumour biology: Policing of oncogene activity by p53, Nature 443 (2006) 159.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
[1]
V. Senez, V. Thomy, R. Dufour, Nanotechnologies for Synthetic Super Non-Wetting Surfaces, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, 2014.
An edited book
[1]
V. Šunjić, Organic Chemistry from Retrosynthesis to Asymmetric Synthesis, Springer International Publishing, Cham, 2016.
A chapter in an edited book
[1]
J.F. Nielsen, H.B. Sørensen, Organizing for Asymmetric Collaboration, in: R.M. Burton, B. Eriksen, D.D. Håkonsson, T. Knudsen, C.C. Snow (Eds.), Designing Organizations: 21st Century Approaches, Springer US, Boston, MA, 2008: pp. 83–103.

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 Web Semantics: Science, Services and Agents on the World Wide Web.

Blog post
[1]
J. Fang, Why Are Almost All Supercentenarians Women?, 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
[1]
Government Accountability Office, Postsecondary Education: Many States Collect Graduates’ Employment Information, but Clearer Guidance on Student Privacy Requirements Is Needed, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2010.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation
[1]
H. Zhu, Outcomes of China Free Antiretroviral Treatment Program, 2003–2010, Doctoral dissertation, University of North Carolina, 2012.

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
[1]
B. Rothenberg, After Stand on Gays, New Name Urged for Margaret Court Arena, New York Times (2017) B9.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by sequential numbers in square brackets:

This sentence cites one reference [1].
This sentence cites two references [1,2].
This sentence cites four references [1–4].

About the journal

Full journal titleWeb Semantics: Science, Services and Agents on the World Wide Web
AbbreviationWeb Semant.
ISSN (print)1570-8268
ScopeComputer Networks and Communications
Human-Computer Interaction
Software

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