How to format your references using the China Information citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for China Information. 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

Cyranoski, David. Will creativity thrive in an island paradise? Nature 429(6988) 2004, 220–21.

A journal article with 2 authors

Jimenez, Raul and Zoltan Haiman. Significant primordial star formation at redshifts z approximately 3-4. Nature 440(7083) 2006, 501–4.

A journal article with 3 authors

Thomson, Keith S., Mark Sutton, and Bethia Thomas. A larval Devonian lungfish. Nature 426(6968) 2003, 833–34.

A journal article with 11 or more authors

Harrington, Joseph, Brad M. Hansen, Statia H. Luszcz, Sara Seager, Drake Deming, Kristen Menou, James Y-K Cho, and L. Jeremy Richardson. The phase-dependent infrared brightness of the extrasolar planet upsilon Andromedae b. Science (New York, N.Y.) 314(5799) 2006, 623–26.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Fell, Gregory J. Decoding the IT Value Problem. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2013.

An edited book

Matthews, Robert W. Insect Behavior: 2nd Edition. in Janice R. Matthews (ed). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2010.

A chapter in an edited book

Ho, Tu Bao, Saori Kawasaki, and Janusz Granat. Knowledge Acquisition by Machine Learning and Data Mining. in Andrzej P. Wierzbicki and Yoshiteru Nakamori (eds), Creative Environments: Issues of Creativity Support for the Knowledge Civilization Age. Studies in Computational Intelligence. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2007. 69–91.

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 China Information.

Blog post

Andrew, Elise. Explore Plants and Insects Magnified Thousands of Times! IFLScience. IFLScience, 24 June 2014. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/explore-plants-and-insects-magnified-thousands-times/ (accessed 30 October 2018).

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. Information Technology Dashboard: Opportunities Exist to Improve Transparency and Oversight of Investment Risk at Select Agencies. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, October 16, 2012.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

Cooper, Elizabeth Anne. Missouri elementary teacher certification programs and the education provided on how boys and girls learn differently. Doctoral dissertation, Lindenwood University, 2009.

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

Yeh, James. A Mother. A Death. A Memoir. It’s Tricky. New York Times12 June 2017.

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text

About the journal

Full journal title	China Information
ISSN (print)	0920-203X
ISSN (online)	1741-590X
Scope