How to format your references using the World Wide Web citation style

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

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 reference managers.
BibTeX	BibTeX styles 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

Adami, C.: Evolution. Reducible complexity. Science. 312, 61–63 (2006)

A journal article with 2 authors

Ahn, S., Lee, S.J.: Nanoparticle role on the repeatability of stimuli-responsive nanocomposites. Sci. Rep. 4, 6624 (2014)

A journal article with 3 authors

Allen, A.P., Brown, J.H., Gillooly, J.F.: Global biodiversity, biochemical kinetics, and the energetic-equivalence rule. Science. 297, 1545–1548 (2002)

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Williams, B.R., Prabhu, V.R., Hunter, K.E., Glazier, C.M., Whittaker, C.A., Housman, D.E., Amon, A.: Aneuploidy affects proliferation and spontaneous immortalization in mammalian cells. Science. 322, 703–709 (2008)

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Davis, T.B.: Audel Industrial Multi-Craft Mini-Ref. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey (2011)

An edited book

Benneworth, P. ed: University Engagement With Socially Excluded Communities. Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht (2013)

A chapter in an edited book

Tiwari, G.N., Tiwari, A., Shyam: Flat-Plate Collectors. In: Tiwari, A. and Shyam (eds.) Handbook of Solar Energy: Theory, Analysis and Applications. pp. 171–246. Springer, Singapore (2016)

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 World Wide Web.

Blog post

Hale, T.: These Scientists Think “Hexagonal Clouds” Could Explain The Bermuda Triangle

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: Student Financial Aid Systems: Absence of Guiding Architecture Reduces Efficiency, Ease of Use. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC (1997)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Kaardal, J.T.: Decoding the Computations of Sensory Neurons, (2017)

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

Walsh, M.W.: Puerto Rico to Restructure Up to $5.7 Billion in Debt, (2015)

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 title	World Wide Web
Abbreviation	World Wide Web
ISSN (print)	1386-145X
ISSN (online)	1573-1413
Scope	Computer Networks and Communications Hardware and Architecture Software