How to format your references using the Writing Systems Research citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Writing Systems Research. 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
Duflo, E. (2012). Rigorous evaluation of human behavior. Science (New York, N.Y.), 336(6087), 1398.
A journal article with 2 authors
Karim, S. S. A., & Karim, Q. A. (2010). AIDS research must link to local policy. Nature, 463(7282), 733–734.
A journal article with 3 authors
Falenty, A., Hansen, T. C., & Kuhs, W. F. (2014). Formation and properties of ice XVI obtained by emptying a type sII clathrate hydrate. Nature, 516(7530), 231–233.
A journal article with 8 or more authors
Zhang, P., Mehta, K., Rehman, S., & Chen, N. (2014). Imaging single chiral nanoparticles in turbid media using circular-polarization optical coherence microscopy. Scientific Reports, 4, 4979.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Tagliamonte, S. A. (2015). Making Waves. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
An edited book
Sojka, P., Kopeček, I., & Pala, K. (Eds.). (2006). Text, Speech and Dialogue: 9th International Conference, TSD 2006, Brno, Czech Republic, September 11-15, 2006. Proceedings (Vol. 4188). Springer.
A chapter in an edited book
Sotelo, A., Guijarro, E., Trujillo, L., Coria, L., & Martínez, Y. (2013). Analysis and Classification of Epilepsy Stages with Genetic Programming. In O. Schütze, C. A. Coello Coello, A.-A. Tantar, E. Tantar, P. Bouvry, P. Del Moral, & P. Legrand (Eds.), EVOLVE - A Bridge between Probability, Set Oriented Numerics, and Evolutionary Computation II (pp. 57–70). Springer.

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 Writing Systems Research.

Blog post
Andrew, E. (2014, September 10). Pure Antimalarial Medications Synthesized From Plant Waste Products. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/pure-antimalarial-medications-synthesized-plant-waste-products/

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. (2016). Vehicle Cybersecurity: DOT and Industry Have Efforts Under Way, but DOT Needs to Define Its Role in Responding to a Real-world Attack (GAO-16-350). 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
Baker, N. S. (2012). Bridging the Gap: Finding the Language of Soul [Doctoral dissertation]. Pacifica Graduate Institute.

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
Crow, K. (2002, November 17). Where 146 Died in a Fire, And a Union Was Born. New York Times, 146.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Duflo, 2012).
This sentence cites two references (Duflo, 2012; Karim & Karim, 2010).

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

  • Two authors: (Karim & Karim, 2010)
  • Three authors: (Falenty et al., 2014)
  • 6 or more authors: (Zhang et al., 2014)

About the journal

Full journal titleWriting Systems Research
AbbreviationWrit. Syst. Res.
ISSN (print)1758-6801
ISSN (online)1758-681X
ScopeLanguage and Linguistics
Linguistics and Language

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