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

Hayes, F. (2003). Toxins-antitoxins: plasmid maintenance, programmed cell death, and cell cycle arrest. Science (New York, N.Y.), 301(5639), 1496–1499.

A journal article with 2 authors

Singh, B. P., & Cowie, A. L. (2014). Long-term influence of biochar on native organic carbon mineralisation in a low-carbon clayey soil. Scientific Reports, 4, 3687.

A journal article with 3 authors

Martin, W. F., Sousa, F. L., & Lane, N. (2014). Evolution. Energy at life’s origin. Science (New York, N.Y.), 344(6188), 1092–1093.

A journal article with 8 or more authors

Wolfrum, C., Asilmaz, E., Luca, E., Friedman, J. M., & Stoffel, M. (2004). Foxa2 regulates lipid metabolism and ketogenesis in the liver during fasting and in diabetes. Nature, 432(7020), 1027–1032.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

D’Andrea, A., & Sjogren, J. (2013). Veterinary Technician’s Large Animal Daily Reference Guide. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An edited book

Musani, M. H. (2015). Clinical Pearls in Diagnostic Cardiac Computed Tomographic Angiography (E. J. Feldmann & M. Poon, Eds.). Springer International Publishing.

A chapter in an edited book

Kim, K., Lee, W.-H., Yu, K.-S., Lee, J.-Y., Ahn, S., & Chung, J.-W. (2008). Recovery Schemes for Fast Fault Recovery on GMPLS Network. In O. Gervasi, B. Murgante, A. Laganà, D. Taniar, Y. Mun, & M. L. Gavrilova (Eds.), Computational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2008: International Conference, Perugia, Italy, June 30– July 3, 2008, Proceedings, Part II (pp. 43–55). 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. (2015, February 7). To Avoid Mantids, Stinkbugs Evolved To Hide In Plain Sight. IFLScience; IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/avoid-mantids-stinkbugs-evolved-hide-plain-sight/

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. (2014). Commercial Aviation: Raising Passenger Facility Charges Would Increase Airport Funding, but Other Effects Less Certain (GAO-15-107). 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

Jennings, S. (2015). Hiring, promotions, and identity negotiation of female hiring agents in American corporate retail [Doctoral dissertation]. University of Phoenix.

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

Mark, M. E. (2012, April 1). Prom Night. New York Times, SR7.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Hayes, 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Hayes, 2003; Singh & Cowie, 2014).

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

Two authors: (Singh & Cowie, 2014)
Three authors: (Martin et al., 2014)
6 or more authors: (Wolfrum et al., 2004)

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