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:

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

Fuyuno, I. (2005). Olympus finds market rival hard to swallow. Nature, 438(7070), 913.

A journal article with 2 authors

Cameron, R., & Schüssler, M. (2015). Solar physics. The crucial role of surface magnetic fields for the solar dynamo. Science (New York, N.Y.), 347(6228), 1333–1335.

A journal article with 3 authors

Poulton, S. W., Fralick, P. W., & Canfield, D. E. (2004). The transition to a sulphidic ocean approximately 1.84 billion years ago. Nature, 431(7005), 173–177.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Damak, S., Rong, M., Yasumatsu, K., Kokrashvili, Z., Varadarajan, V., Zou, S., Jiang, P., Ninomiya, Y., & Margolskee, R. F. (2003). Detection of sweet and umami taste in the absence of taste receptor T1r3. Science (New York, N.Y.), 301(5634), 850–853.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Todinov, M. (2015). Reliability and Risk Models. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Gang, D. R. (Ed.). (2011). The Biological Activity of Phytochemicals (Vol. 41). Springer.

A chapter in an edited book

Sindou, M. (2015). Is There a Place for Microsurgical Vascular Decompression of the Brainstem for Apparent Essential Blood Hypertension? A Review. In J. Schramm (Ed.), Advances and Technical Standards in Neurosurgery: Volume 42 (pp. 69–76). 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 Writing Systems Research.

Blog post

Hamilton, K. (2016, September 8). Was Neil Armstrong Misquoted? Study Suggests His Accent Could’ve Been To Blame. IFLScience; IFLScience.

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. (2000). Federal Communications Commission: Competitive Bidding Procedures (OGC-00-69). 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

Sommer, A. (2017). How Experiences Influence and Inform School Principals’ Actions to Further Develop Teachers’ Instructional Practice [Doctoral dissertation]. George Washington University.

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

Greenhouse, L. (2006, April 20). Arizona’s Strict Approach to Insanity Defenses Gets a Hearing Before the Supreme Court. New York Times, A25.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Fuyuno, 2005).
This sentence cites two references (Cameron & Schüssler, 2015; Fuyuno, 2005).

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

Two authors: (Cameron & Schüssler, 2015)
Three authors: (Poulton et al., 2004)
6 or more authors: (Damak et al., 2003)

About the journal

Full journal title	Writing Systems Research
Abbreviation	Writ. Syst. Res.
ISSN (print)	1758-6801
ISSN (online)	1758-681X
Scope	Language and Linguistics Linguistics and Language