How to format your references using the IEEE Communications Letters citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for IEEE Communications Letters. 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

[1]

E. Lieberman Aiden, “GE Prize essay. Zoom!,” Science, vol. 334, no. 6060, pp. 1222–1223, Dec. 2011.

A journal article with 2 authors

[1]

R. D. Fields and B. Stevens-Graham, “New insights into neuron-glia communication,” Science, vol. 298, no. 5593, pp. 556–562, Oct. 2002.

A journal article with 3 authors

[1]

J. M. Halley, Y. Iwasa, and D. Vokou, “Comment on ‘Extinction debt and windows of conservation opportunity in the Brazilian Amazon,’” Science, vol. 339, no. 6117, p. 271, Jan. 2013.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

[1]

O. N. Bjørnstad, M. Peltonen, A. M. Liebhold, and W. Baltensweiler, “Waves of larch budmoth outbreaks in the European alps,” Science, vol. 298, no. 5595, pp. 1020–1023, Nov. 2002.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

[1]

M. J. Flynn and W. Luk, Computer System Design. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2011.

An edited book

[1]

F. Ortuño and I. Rojas, Eds., Bioinformatics and Biomedical Engineering: 4th International Conference, IWBBIO 2016, Granada, Spain, April 20-22, 2016, Proceedings, vol. 9656. in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 9656. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2016.

A chapter in an edited book

[1]

D. F. Rico, “Lean and Agile Project Management: For Large Programs and Projects,” in Lean Enterprise Software and Systems: First International Conference, LESS 2010, Helsinki, Finland, October 17-20, 2010. Proceedings, P. Abrahamsson and N. Oza, Eds., in Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing. , Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer, 2010, pp. 37–43.

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 IEEE Communications Letters.

Blog post

[1]

E. Andrew, “Believe It Or Not, This Isn’t A Snake. So What Is It?,” IFLScience. Accessed: Oct. 30, 2018. [Online]. Available: https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/trust-me-not-snake-it-s-going-be-beautiful-butterfly/

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

[1]

Government Accountability Office, “Federal Agency Roles and Responsibilities for Emergency Communications Need Clarification,” U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, LCD-80-91, Aug. 1980.

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

[1]

D. D. Ghosh, “Audio Watermarking Using DWT Algorithm and Symmetric Key Cryptography,” Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA, 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

[1]

L. Greenhouse, “A Case-by-Case Ruling on Discrimination,” New York Times, p. A17, Feb. 27, 2008.

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], [2], [3], [4].

About the journal

Full journal title	IEEE Communications Letters
Abbreviation	IEEE Commun. Lett.
ISSN (print)	1089-7798
Scope	Computer Science Applications Electrical and Electronic Engineering Modelling and Simulation